Compared with the language features of English dishes, the Chinese names of dishes are more complicate。 Chinese care about the beauty of rhyme and image, that is, even concise names can contain rich information。 Like, “龙凤相会”, English name is stewed snake and chicken。 In this dish, it contains the main raw materials and cooking method, what’s more, it creates a beautiful poetic imagery, improves the level of connotation of dish itself and also exhibits the national culture and aesthetic interest。 Although the names of Western dishes are less artistic, they are more useful for the complete transfer of information, particularly the cultural element in Western dish names are far away from in Chinese ones。 The composition of Western cuisine names are mostly clear and clear information about the raw materials (main materials and accessories) of dishes。 Examples are Ham & Eggs(蛋黄火腿), Pork Sausage & Mashed Potatoes(薯泥香肠)。 Moreover, westerners are used to understand dishes’ Materials and cooking methods by dish names and then decide what to eat next。 For instance, Smoked Salmon Rolls(熏桂鱼卷), Grilled Summer Lobster(烤龙虾), Fried Beefsteak(炸牛排)。
To sum up, the main difference in Chinese and West naming is, Chinese pay due attention to emotion and meaning, pleasing rhythm and format structure, while the complete transmission of cuisine information is the West one。
3。4 Cooking methods and cutting论文网
During material processing, Chinese dishes are careful about the various fancy collocations of major material and ingredient。 Cutting is also important in the process, which is the processing method of food before cooking。 It includes cut, chop, split, pick, hand tear and so on。 The model of food material is the shape forms after certain cutting processing, like, 片(pieces), 卷(rolls), 块(cubes), 段(segment), 丝(shreds), 条(strips), 丁(dices), 粒(grains), 泥(chops),汁(juice) and so forth。 Relatively speaking, the shapes of western food are single, just a few, like, cubes/pieces(块), slices(片), dices(丁), mince/chops(泥), shreds(丝)。 In accordance with this, it is easy to find that is not one-to-one correspondence, which requires the translator to ensure translation of Chinese dish name shape meaning maximally similar to the lexical meaning of original corpus。
About cooking methods, on one side, Chinese food pay more attention to the use of fire and the amount of seasoning。 Thus, there are many kinds of cooking methods of Chinese dishes like, 煎(pan-fry), 炒(stir-fry), 蒸(steam), 煮(boil/poach), 炸(deep-fry), 白灼(scald), 烧(braise), 熏(smoke) and other dozens ways。 In contrast, the cooking time of Western food is short and moderate。 To keep the nutrition of food, the relevant seasoning cannot be put directly into the cooked dishes together with raw materials。 Meanwhile, the cooking process of Western dishes are comparatively simple, like barbecue/roast (烤), broil (串烧/炙), bake (焗/烘), braise (烧/烩) and so on。 On the other side, seasoning, compound flavor type is in the majority of Chinese dishes and with the requirement of mixing with raw materials, but Western-style food highlights the raw flavor and independently use of seasonings。 Further, the Chinese people’s taste for food texture is more abundant than the British and American countries’ people。 For example, the most that Chinese value is the food texture of “香酥鸭子”(crispy duck), the duck is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside。 If explaining this “酥”(crispy) and “软” (soft) to English-speaking countries people, this may be difficult。
4。 Problems in English Translation of Chinese Dish Names
With the help of series of studies and relative materials, the current problems in the exiting English translation of Chinese dish names are collected。 After making some relevant analysis, these problems are pided into four parts and will be illustrated with instances and analyzed as follows: 中西方饮食文化差异下中国菜名的英译策略(5):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_200001.html