Abstract
 
As a clue of China's food culture, Chinese dish names specify the ingredients, manufacturing process, colors, aromas, and flavors, and originators. This paper studies the naming ways of Chinese dishes and analyzes the current problems of dish names translation. In light of Nida’s “functional equivalence", this paper proposes five methods in the translation of Chinese dish names: literal translation, free translation, transliteration, translation with explaining and domestication of Chinese dish names.

Key words: Chinese food, Chinese dish names, translation, the principle of functional equivalence

摘    要

作为中国饮食文化的线索，中式菜名短短几个汉字，却包含了制作原料、制作工艺、色香味形乃至发源地创作人等信息。本文较为全面的研究中式菜名的命名方式，分析当前中式菜名翻译中存在的问题，以奈达的“功能对等”翻译理论为基础，通过具体的实例分析，探讨运用直译，意译，音译，加注和归化等方式翻译中式菜名。

关键词：中餐；中式菜名；翻译；功能对等理论

1. Introduction
With the amazing growth of China, it has attracted a great number of foreign tourists, many of whom are interested in Chinese culture, especially Chinese food.
As is known to all, Chinese food culture has a long history of thousands of years. Chinese dishes are famous for their colors, aromas, and flavors. Chinese cooking shows great arbitrariness in selecting materials. Many food materials which are thrown away by Westerners are excellent ingredients in Chinese cuisine; The Chinese cook can make the food delicious while the foreign chefs cannot deal with it.
   Chinese dish names, as a symbol of the Chinese food culture, deliver the information of the food itself and its background.
The translation of the Chinese names into English is necessary and important to Chinese and westerners.
2. Demonstration
2.1General introduction to the naming of Chinese dishes
Chinese dishes are extremely rich, and there is a variety of dish names. The aim of dish names is to tell the customers the basic ingredients, cooking ways and characteristics. Chinese dish names not only reflect the amazing variety of the raw ingredients, seasonings, knife skills, cooking methods, and ways of cutting, but also reveal much tradition and culture of the country. What’s more, Chinese dish names always use four Chinese characters, which read simple and catchy.