Many researches, though, talking about animal and plant, don’t connect the translation of animal and plant vocabularies with menu translation。 Zhang Yuan (2015) talks about the translation of animal vocabularies based on the theory of translation equivalence。 Zhou Jie (2016) makes comparison between animal cultural connotation of Chinese and western。 Zhou Weiwei (2011) analyzes the translation of animal and plant vocabularies of China and western countries。

And several dissertations discuss the menu translation way guided by main ingredient, way of cooking, shape, flavor, person name or place name, and so on (Zheng Jinping&Niu Xinsheng,2013; Liu Chaoyang,2010)。 However, they rarely further study what lose or gain in the translation process。

In conclusion, there is a large amount of dissertations for English translation of Chinese food menu and for animal and plant vocabularies like connotation and translation, however, they rarely combine them together, and dig out what lose and gain in the English translation of Chinese food menu。 Under this circumstance, studies for English translation of animal and plant vocabularies in Chinese food menu have huge developmental space。

2。2 Scattered Theories

Famous translation theories like domestication and foreignization, functional equivalence, skopostheorie are often applied in the studies of English translation of Chinese food menu。 For example, Zhang Yun (2011） analyzes the practicability and significance of domestication for Chinese food menu translation, and she also discusses the acceptance and necessity of foreignization for this translation from the purpose of promoting national culture。 Li Huimin and Liu qin (2010) from the viewpoint of skopos, claim that menu translation has strong purposes that it aims to stimulate appetite and spread Chinese culture。 

Domestication and foreignization, more specifically, is a kind of translation strategies。 The combination of this two strategies can make the target text more readable。 For some culture-loaded menus, if they are just translated by one of these two strategies or both of them, and are not given interpretation, the diner will feel confused with the name because of the culture gap。 Therefore, other techniques such as attaching pictures and notes are needed。论文网

Skopostheorie has three basic principles: purpose, coherence, fidelity。 However, persity of cultures and difference of languages between China and English-speaking countries would set difficulties to follow these three principles。

Generally speaking, these studies have achieved a lot in the translation theory and principle aspect。 They, however, only focus on one or two theories which make the menu translation lack of systemic and comprehensive study。 And analyzing the menu translation from these fragments can only stay on the narrow level。 In other words, through the translation process, it is impossible to use only one theory or principle or technique to achieve better translation。 Hence, a theory which can joint together the translation itself and views, strategies, methods for translation is in urgent need。

2。3 Translation Memetics

The theory of Translation Memes just solves the problem of fragmentation。

Memetics is the theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene。 Proponents describe Memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer。

   The MEME, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behavior, etc。) which is "hosted" in the minds of one or more inpiduals and can reproduce itself, thereby jump from mind to mind。 Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one inpidual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen as an idea-replicator reproducing itself in a new host。 As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host。