The study on cuisine name translation has experienced roughly two phases. Although the target text and the target reader have been taken note of in the earlier period, finding equivalence to the source text is generally considered more important. Later on, the places of target text and target reader are much more highlighted. Some factors like cultural context, aesthetics and cognitive environment of readers have been discussed. On the whole, the relationship has shift from “ST-Translator-TT” to “Translator-TT-Target Reader”. 

In the past decades, the center of translation mainly focused on grasping the wholeness of the text and translators’ holistic perception is requested by such a trend. Since Jiang Qiuxia came up with image-G theory, gestalt theory as a systematic and theoretic theory has been applied in translation of different literary genres. Although target text and target reader occupy an increasingly important place in today’s cuisine name translation, there is a lack of systematic and theoretic study on target reader, especially reader’s Gestalt psychology. The gestalt-based cuisine name translation requires that translator should put the psychology of target reader at the first place, taking reader’s Gestalt psychology into full consideration and adopting appropriate translation strategies. 

Basically speaking, translation is the switch of two language codes and the process of psychological representation. By now, the concept of gestalt or Gestalt psychology has been applied in lots of translation studies, such as in the translation of poetry, prose, novel, advertisement and so on. Therefore, the integration of gestalt theory and translation is feasible. However, up to now, the study of translation from the perspective of gestalt theory has hardly been conducted in the area of cuisine name translation. Most of the cuisine name translation only focuses on accuracy and the translation strategies are lacking theoretic guidance, and many cuisine name translation researches only briefly mentioned the importance of readers’ psychology but have not given a systematic and in-depth study on that. Gestalt theory will help to form a systematic guidance on cuisine name translation. It is believed that it will shed light on the further research into this phenomenon and it will in some extent help improve menu translation so as to guarantee a successful and effective communication with other cultures, and meanwhile to spread Chinese culture worldwide. 

1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Thesis

It is believed that cuisine name translation under the perspective of gestalt theory will shed light on the further research into this phenomenon and it will in some extent help improve cuisine name translation so as to guarantee a successful and effective communication with other cultures, and meanwhile to spread Chinese culture worldwide. Besides, the application of gestalt-based translation strategy also shows that the traditional pattern of translation has shifted to the reader-oriented translation pattern, the shift of which implies that in translation field, translators pay much more attention to reader’s psychology, especially their aesthetic feelings. It, on the other hand, shows that reader’s aesthetic judgment has increased a lot during the past decades, which results from the rapid development of Chinese economy, politics, culture and overall national strength. The stronger the country becomes, the higher aesthetic judgment the people possess. When the material standard of living is improved, for sure people will try to improve their spiritual life, satisfying their aesthetic needs.