Plural Complementary Awareness In Chinese-English Dish Name Translation

As one of the most important parts of Chinese culture,food culture has always been a channel to probe into Chinese culture for foreigners.Nowadays,it is quite a commonplace to find Chinese dish names on the menu along with their English translation.Chinese dish names could be counted as a messenger of Chinese culture which is presented to the world stage through its English counterpart.It has been of many scholars' interest to find out the best way to deliver Chinese food culture through English.Some scholars tried to apply both Chinese and Western translation theories into the practice of dish names translation,such as "Accuracy","Fluency","Elegancy" standard by Yan Fu;"Functional Equivalence" by Eugene Nida;"Culture Translation Theory" by Susan Bassnett,etc.However,the study on the translation of Chinese dish names still deserves our attention because dissatisfaction still exists in conveying Chinese food culture by using these translation theories.In the 1980s,Professor Gu Zhengkun first proposed the Plural Complementary Translation Theory which was theoretically built on the basis of both ancient Chinese philosophy of "Yi Jing" and "Lao Zhuang" as well as western well-established translation criteria.So far,there have been scholars who studied the C-E tourism translation under the guidance of Plural Complementary Translation Theory;however,not any C-E dish name translation study has been carried out from the angle of Plural Complementary Translation Theory which in turn highlights the significance of this thesis.This thesis falls into five chapters.Chapter One is a general introduction clarifying the significance,objective,method and the outline of this thesis.Chapter Two presents the literature review,covering previous research on dish name translation and detailed introduction of Plural Complementary Translation Theory.Meanwhile the author attempts to propose a specific standard system that suits C-E dish name translation in specified circumstances.Chapters Three and Four are the main body of this thesis.Chapter Three makes a comparative text study of current C-E dish name translation in China (Beijing) and that of the U.S.(Washington D.C.& New York) in accordance with the specific Plural Complementary Translation Standard System set up in Chapter Two.The author explores the advantage and disadvantage of both Chinese and American C-E dish name translations. Meanwhile,the author analyzed the cross-reference value of each version.Chapter Four starts from a brief introduction of Chinese food culture and a classification of Chinese dish names,then it comes to the suggestive specific C-E dish name translation samples under the guidance of Plural Complementary Translation Awareness.Chapter Five is the conclusion,summarizing the whole thesis and offering advice for future research on Chinese dish name translation.