Translation Report On Yunnan Snacks— Excerpted From Taste Of Chinese Local Snacks

This paper is a translation report on Yunnan snacks excerpted from the book entitled Taste of Chinese Local Snacks. There are a wide range of snacks in China with long history and profound culture. However, Yunnan, as a province with the most ethnic groups, produces local snacks with even more distinctive features and richer cultural connotation. To translate the culture of snacks from one language into another without changing the original meaning and style is not an easy task. Indeed, plenty of difficulties have been encountered during the translation practice, for instance, the translation for the names of the snacks, idioms, four-word structures, and literary allusions.To solve the problems, the Principles of Equivalent Effect by Jin Di was selected as guidance, which stresses the concept of receptors’ response. Considering from the perspectives of content equivalence, culture equivalence and value equivalence, the author therefore decided to solve the problems by using the methods such as transliteration plus annotation, literal translation, free translation, literal translation plus annotation, literal translation plus free translation and analogy, so as to enable the receptors in target language to have basically the same reading results as the receptors in source language.In this paper, a detailed report about the translation process was given first, then some major types of problems and the relevant strategies in the case studies, and then a summery that the translation on Yunnan snacks is exactly a process to seek for equivalent effect in English. In the end, a glossary of the terms on the names of Yunnan snacks, special ingredients, four-word structures, idioms and allusions is attached, in the hope of enhancing the corpus of Chinese snacks, and offering possible reference and help to other fellows in translating snacks.