However, Chinese and western food have huge various in cultures, Chinese food is unique make it not easily to translate。 As we all know, there are many different kinds of traditional Chinese food dishes named after history, tradition and celebrities in all ages of Chinese nation。 Sometimes, foreign guests who are short of cross-culture awareness misunderstood some interpreters, it also on account of their lack of ability to translate Chinese food names into English correctly。 They do not know much about the differences between Chinese and English countries’ dietary cultures and pay less attention to the translation methods for the Chinese dish name, they translate dish name depend on their imagination or ask for some foreign friends to translate them。 This situation sometimes makes foreign friends confused about our Chinese culture。 Therefore, it’s very important to understand the history of China and the west diet culture for Chinese dishes translation。 As a result, the Chinese implication dietary culture could be spread in a better way all over the world。
2。 Rendering Principles of Chinese Dishes论文网
First, the names of the dishes have an information function, which transfer ingredients, cooking methods, raw materials and so on。 Menu is one of the restaurant products, with the purpose of attracting customers and selling products to them。 Many dishes involves personal and place names, it aims to enhance the quality and grades, always add some animal names and natural scenery。 Based on this, the translations come across barriers of language and culture in the west。 Want to let Westerners understand and accept the Chinese name translation must follow some principles。 After reading various articles on this subject, the following four principles to be listed on focusing dish name translation。
2。1 Avoiding Cultural Misunderstanding
Chinese dishes imply auspicious meaning, Translation obstacles factors automatically appeared because of language barriers and cognitive barriers。 Chinese people pay high attention to the artistic dish names, they tend to apply metaphors or auspicious in naming dishes。 But western person concern the truth of the dish names significantly。 They consider that the entire dish name should served accord with original things and raw material。 Such as jade in the shark's fin is only for decoration of fresh vegetables but not for decoration of the real shark’s fin, but expect Chinese people know this, most westerners can’t understand it until someone explain to them。 Take in this sense, avoiding cultural misunderstanding is one way to translate Chinese dishes correctly。
2。2 Evading Cultural Taboo
As cross-cultural communications become popular, breaking the cultural taboo could probably suffer a setback among people or do harm to the Chinese and foreign friendship。 Some inedible items or animal name are used to translation, it is according to the original material name translation, if some western taboo are the same as Chinese , they will not misunderstand , so you can omit it。 Otherwise, we need to attach importance to the cultural taboos。 For example, “红烧狮子头”（ Braised lion head）which is a famous Chinese food from Yangzhou province, it use glutinous rice balls to make the food look like lion’s hair ,the food exactly will lead the foreigners feel unhealthy, because they don’t know the real ingredients in braised lion head, they may consider it made by real lion head 。And still make an example for another dish 脆皮乳鸽（Crispy Pigeon）, pigeon will be a symbol of peace ,and Westerners cannot accept to eat it, so it is best to evade。
2。3 Retaining Chinese traits 文献综述
Chinese cooking is absolutely necessary in Chinese culture, it help Chinese people make friends with foreigners and promoting cultural progress and communication。 Thus, “Chinese dish translation should serve to promote Chinese traditional culture and give publicity to the culinary culture and traditions of China as much as possible”。 (Zhen 89) 从中餐菜名英译看中西饮食文化差异(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_201130.html