Abstract: Chinese dishes enjoy a great popularity all over the world. Their translation is a purposeful action possessing the skopos of achieving the cultural exchanges, realizing the necessary linguistic conversions and facilitating the aesthetic communication between the English and Chinese cultures. Therefore when dealing with the dish names containing cultural connotations, translators should be fully aware of the cultural gaps and employ proper translation strategies to build the bridge over the gap so as to produce a translated version that is understandable and acceptable to the foreign customers. The translators should also be fully aware of the linguistic differences and adopt suitable translation methods to realize the linguistic conversions. Besides the Chinese and western people have different aesthetic preferences. Chinese customers enjoy the dish names associated with beautiful images or auspicious and warm pictures, whereas western people focus more on the simplicity and usefulness of dish names. Therefore translators have to achieve the aesthetic conversions as well.
Key Words: Chinese dish name translation; Skopostheorie; cultural exchange; linguistic conversion; aesthetic communication

摘  要：中国菜在世界各地都大受欢迎。菜名翻译是目的性行为，具有在英汉两种文化间实现文化交流、进行必要的语言转换以及促进审美传达的目的。因此处理有文化内涵的菜名时，译者应当充分意识到文化差异，并运用适当的翻译策略在文化间架起沟通的桥梁，以便得出外国顾客能够理解并接受的译文。译者还应当充分意识到语言差异，并采用适当的翻译方法实现语言上的转换。此外，中国人和西方人具有不同的审美取向。中国顾客喜欢能体会出美丽意象或其中包含吉祥温馨画面的菜名，而西方人更注重菜名的简单实用性。因此译者也必须实现审美上的转换。
关键词：中式菜名翻译；目的论；文化交流；语言转换；审美传达