A Case Study Of Chinese Menu Translation From The Perspective Of Intercultural Communication

Menu is the language of food.The research on Chinese restaurant menu translation from a cross-cultural communication perspective has gradually attracted attention from home and abroad.This paper takes the menu of Café China,a Michelin star restaurant in New York,as the subject of study.By using corpus comparison,literature review,and case analysis,this paper makes a systematic investigation and analysis on the translation strategies of this menu based on cross-cultural communication theories.A previous research proposes seven principles for menu translation,namely semantic proximity,cultural communication,economic development,aesthetics,innovation,conciseness and brand establishment.This paper consolidates them into three principles to analyze the menu translation quality of Café China.Café China's menu mainly adopts the translation strategy of literal translation followed by explanation,which by and large meets all requirements of menu translation.As such,this translation method can be used as a reference for menu translation of other Chinese restaurants in the future.