The Study On The Formularization Of Beijing Dishes Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Beijing's local dishes have always been favored by tourists at home and abroad.With the rich cultural connotations and culture-specific expressions,Beijing dishes serve a desirable target of translation study.A glance over the translation of Beijing dishes,however,reveals a host of problems,such as semantic absences,wrongful collocations,improper translation methods,mistranslations and so on.The status quo falls short of the expectations of target readers and is in dire need for improvement.Besides,the translation methods put forward by predecessors are mostly commonplace techniques involving transliteration,transliteration with annotations,etc.To address the above issues and better promote publicity translation towards typology and systematization,the author ventures to put forward a portfolio of formulas for the translation of Beijing's local dishes,which is virtually pioneering work in this field.This thesis is conducted under Vermeer's Skopos theory.The research process can be summarized as the collection of Beijing and English dishes,the comparative analyses of the characteristics and differences between these two,the analyses of existing translation phenomena and problems from the perspective of three basic rules of Skopos theory,the proposal of innovative translation methods to solve the problems and the verification of the methods.Based on 200-odd dishes from restaurant menus in Beijing and English-speaking countries respectively,this thesis makes a comparative study of the characteristics,cultural connotations and functions,classifies and tabulates the corpus according to semantic category and language structure and then summarizes seven basic structures of Beijing dishes.At the same time,to guide the C-E translation,the characteristics of English dishes and the menu reading habits of target readers are suumarized.From the perspective of skopos,coherence and fidelity rules of Skopos theory,this thesis further analyzes the multi-translation of the same dish,mistranslations and semantic absences in current translation of Beijing dishes and proposes the principles of flexibility,simplification and practicality in specific translation process.In order to solve the above-mentioned translation problems,this thesis proposes a package of translation formulas,namely seven basic formulas and four combined ones.Admittedly,formularization is not an exhaustive approach to cover all types of dishes,and auxiliary methods may come in handy,so methods of description and label,special name plus common name,borrowing,simplification,omission and amplification are provided to supplement.Finally,new data are collected to verify the translation formulas.A questionnaire is used to evaluate the acceptance degree of the target readers,obtain their feedback and modify the translation methods.The formulas have been proved practical and effective.This thesis works as a further analysis,research and application of the three rules of Skopos theory,a combination of theory with translation practice.Translation principles and methods suitable for different types of dishes are put forward.These translation methods,especially the formularization method,have been proved practical and effective through questionnaires.Formularization in translation can be applied to the translation of other regions or ethnic minorities,dishes and the traditional Chinese medicines.This thesis is an effort to promote Chinese culture to the outside world through Chinese delicacies and develop the translation towards standardization and systematization.