In fact, academic researches targeted on the diet culture translation are not enough, especially like researches taking the menu translation as object。 Tracing the reasons, it is generally believed that the academic study of the theme of the menu translation is unserious。 People can easily find a lot of books about Chinese food, but rarely find the related English data and translation。 Even the referenced datums are found, the bad became mixed with the good。 Thus this thesis aims to use the “Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance” theory to guide the translation of Huaiyang Cuisine dishes。 Starting from the correlation between the three principles, the author tries to propose several translation methods of Huaiyang Cuisine translation。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 The process and status of Chinese dishes translation

Chinese food culture enjoys a good reputation in the world because of being broad and profound。 Huaiyang Cuisine occupies an important position in Chinese food culture, and also means great importance for Chinese cultural diffusion。 文献综述

However the researches on Chinese food Translation are extremely few in the translation circle。 Only seven related articles were published during the ten years in 1990s。 According to the author’s acquaintance, Liu Zengyu (1990) seemed to pay early attention to the translation studies。 Seeing that the situation of dishes translation was a mess, he advocated establishing the Chinese food Translation Committee。 Chen Jiaji (1993) put forward several translation types of Chinese dishes: Realistic (literal translation), freehand type (free translation, literal translation as the subsidiary), semi realistic semi freehand brushwork (literal translation and paraphrase), local style and allusive (literal translation or free translation plus explanation translation) and medicated type (simple translation with annotation)。 

Afterwards some relevant articles came out in some journals, but the quantity was not much。 Moreover, the publications were relatively fragmented and lack of systematic and comprehensive research in general。 Xie Xianze, so as some other professors, considered that the studies on the translation of Chinese dishes were at least not enough in the following deficiencies: In the first place, studies on Chinese dishes translation principles should be further。 In the second place, the translations of dishes were lack of pertinence。 Finally, studies on the translation of dishes originated from historical allusions and rich in cultural meanings turned out to touch superficially。 Investigators were pressed for valuable essays and standards。 

Yang Yamin held the view that there are two major obstacles hindering the translation of Chinese dishes。 On the one hand, dish vacancy caused lexical vacancy。 Dishes like“饺子、元宵、粽子”were totally Chinese foods, many people translated them as “dumpling” likewise for they found no corresponding vocabularies in English。 But as we all know the three dishes are totally different with respective cultural background。 On the other hand, Chinese culinary culture is broad and profound, many names of dishes performing as the allusion, metaphor, exaggeration, symbolism and other forms, which brings great difficulties to the translation。 Once the particularity of Chinese food was held improperly, misunderstandings would be caused。 Another account bringing out chaos in translation was related to the limited capacity of the translators。 The manifold translations on the menu often puzzled the foreigners。 Some restaurants went so far as to translate“童子鸡” into “Chicken Without Sexual Life”。 

On February 20, 2007, CNN reported an article named Misinterpreted Translations, which briefly introduced some available translation situation of Chinese dishes in Beijing。 The anchor said mistake and nonstandard translations prevailed everywhere。 Some of these translations even made foreigners feel very burlesque or fearful about Chinese food。 Such as “口水鸡” was translated into “slobbering chicken”, “夫妻肺片” was translated into “ husband and wife lung slices”, “四喜丸子” was translated into “four glad meatballs”, “麻婆豆腐” was translated into “bean curd made by a pock2marked woman”, “蚂蚁上树” was translated into “a pile of ant s climbing trees”, “驴打滚儿” was translated into “rolling donkey”。 Some scholars were worried that these translations have caused greatly negative impact at home and abroad。 Thus improving the quality of translation of Chinese dishes brooks no delay。