Is said that there was ethnic Chinese to New Zealand, ambitious foreigners to open a restaurant to promote Chinese food culture. Restaurant opened, cook invited, licenses are granted down, who wants to open only three days with the outside protesters Wai was packed. Why? Because there saying goes dishes called "stewed lion head", the boss directly translated into English "Bouilli of Lion Head". Results Jingnu local group of animal protection organizations, who can not stand the Chinese people openly selling meat from a lion. Going down the drain the boss dictionary racked their brains turn issued a document to identify a word "bouilli". Finally the boss had placed ads in newspapers to apologize to clarify obediently changed the name of the dish back to "pork ball". Similar examples are "Sixi meatballs" to "Four Glad Meat Balls". Originally it easier for foreigners to understand and promote Chinese cuisine, but just the opposite, a laughing stock.
This story told us that the main purpose of the translation is to produce the target language as much as possible so that readers with the source language to reflect the same, while the above story is precisely the opposite. In order to achieve this objective, we must understand the psychology of the reader. Readers of the English translation of Chinese food names of dishes are mainly foreign friends to eat Chinese food, they go to Chinese restaurant for dinner first concern is what to eat and taste what is, and then the dish is the practice of the last name of the dish is the implication. Therefore, the primary task is to translate recipes will be Chinese food ingredients, taste, cooking methods translated, on this basis, re-translation of a knife, and finally cultural implication. Under the name of the dish in front of talking about the naming of Chinese food classification, we should take a different translation methods.