A Study On Chinese-English Monu Translation Models And Their Equivalent Effects

Chinese cuisine and Chinese culture are inseparable. As many foreigners come to visit China each day, the menus with other language than only the Chinese has become a necessity for the eaters and suppliers, so the quality of the translation has become an important issue in the practice of the cross-culture communication and the study of translation field. However, as English is an international language used all over the world, menus with English translation is the first choice in helping the majority people from the other countries to read and select the food they want to order, but many restaurants in China can either provide the menu with only Chinese language, or the menus with problems in English translation. The phenomenon of one dish with many English names, with the translation failing to convey the meanings, with many misunderstandings, with mechanical translations and with the translations full of confusions is still existed.According the statistic information provided by Beijing Qianlong website in 2008, only about 800 restaurants in Beijing named their dishes with the reference of book Chinese Menu in English Version published in 2008 by Beijing Tourism Bureau in the beginning of the year, that is to say many thousands of restaurants in China are using the Chinese-English menus with other different translations. In fact, negative comments on the Chinese-English menu translation have been among national scholars and the foreigners for years, and the problems in the Chinese-English menu translations have also been found out and discussed previously. By 2009, more than six translation models have been found used in Chinese-English menu translations recommended by the academic society of the national foreign language learning, they are:literal translation model, transliteration model, literal-transliteration with explanation model, free translation model, picture-transliteration model and isomorphism model. The problems are how the above translation models help the Chinese menu to be translated into English with the equivalent effects towards its target language; what factors damaged the effectiveness of Chinese menu translation; what translation models worked better for Chinese menu translation and what type of menus are going to be well accepted by the foreign visitors have not been studies specifically.In order to find out the answers to the above questions and to the extent of equivalent effects of the current six prevailing translation models used in translating the Chinese menus between Chinese and English languages, to know the mostly functional translation models among the present practiced models, to find out the most likely types of the Chinese-English menus, the research was designed to do the investigation among the foreigners through a self-designed questionnaire.This research questionnaire selected twenty five typical dishes from the current used Chinese-English cuisine menus of the five well-known domestic restaurants in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Changchun, with their translations and some others from the book of Chinese Menu in English Version and other relative references as testing items. All the 25 testing items was classified into the groups according to the ways of naming Chinese dishes, they were:dishes named after their ingredients, cooking methods and cuttings; after metaphors; after a place; after a person; after a well-known local legend; after auspicious words; after the numerous ingredients of the dish; the well-known dish name accepted by foreigners and local specials, test it from the perspective of inter-culture to regulate Chinese menu in English translation, facilitate traveling industry, improve the quality of hotel employees, rich teaching for hotel majors and promote Chinese and Western cultural communication.The data collected with the help of an American international agency, and one hundred copies of answers were chosen to be the sample for the study. The results showed from the data that the equivalent effects of Chinese menu in English translation were above the 80%. The most workable translation model for Chinese menu was the literal-transliteration with explanation. As to the menus, the kind expected by the foreigners was the one provided with Chinese-English translation and the pictures, and if the name of a dish is named after a historical event or with certain cultural information, an additional note with ingredients and cooking method was necessary.From the present research, the lower awareness of the intercultural communication is a big problem in the Chinese-English menu translation. Above all, for a Chinese-English translator, understanding the English speaking countries' culinary culture and its expressions is very important while working on the Chinese menu translation. After all, translation should be in correspondent with the requirements of Western readers. And cultural differences, religious differences, moral values and taboos should be taken into consideration into any translation. Finally, a good translator must know the Chinese cuisine and its cultural information as well. All these can be the insurance to guarantee to the correlative translation of a Chinese dish from its Chinese into a well-accepted English name.Generally speaking, the correlative translation of the Chinese menu can involve as many factors from languages, cultures, histories and translators personal qualities and etc. Many more experts and researchers have done their contributions to it before. However, this is a hard and endless work, it needs more attentions from all people from the society and the relative government departments. It is the author's wish that this thesis can help some in better the translation of the Chinese menu and be a reference anyone who is going to be interested in doing any further research in the field.