English Translation Of Chinese Menu From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

With a history of thousands of years, the Chinese cuisine culture has held a highly important position in Chinese culture and won a renowned reputation abroad. Chinese dish names not only reflect the variety of ingredients, cooking methods, color, aroma, taste, appearance of the dishes, but also contain lots of cultural elements such as dish inventors, original places, and auspicious words. Accurate and elegant translation of Chinese menu plays an important role in promoting the interaction among peoples of different countries in such an era that cross-border exchanges have been increasingly significant.In the academic field there are some researches on Chinese menu translation from the cultural perspective, which has given an important guideline for Chinese food translation. Menu translation, not a simple job of linguistic level transferring as many people think, keeps influenced by many aspects. This writer conducted questionnaires to collect the data on the foreigner readers'acceptation of different translations.Based on the concepts of Reception Theory, the thesis analyzes the process of menu translation and the active elements that influence the Chinese dish translation. Finally, based on the survey of questionnaires, the writer analyzes the translation of different kinds of Chinese dishes from the perspective of Reception Theory and gives suggestion for the translations of Chinese dishes in different kinds.