1.2 Purpose of the research  

The purpose of the research is to study using native English to translate the names of Sichuan dishes in showing its profound cultural heritage in cross-cultural communication activities. 

“Humanity's most fundamental relationship is with what we eat (民以食为天）” Since ancient times, China has always been “the country of food” with extensive and profound diet culture. Of all the eight schools of China’s culinary culture, Sichuan cuisine is the most popular. It is the most representative member of regional culture, which has shown its local traditions and customs in the most unique way. It spreads Chinese culture to other nations over the world. So this research is of great significance. 

However the current translations of Sichuan dishes names are not good enough. They are lack of specific research of English diet culture. They has no consideration of the differences between Chinese and English language features. The translation of Sichuan cuisines is full of information transmission and cultural vacancy that makes foreign guests difficult to understand. This kind of English translation can not fully meet the foreign guests expectations and aesthetic need. These problems make the Chinese diet culture difficult to be spreaded and leads to the failure of cross-cultural communication.

So this research is imperative. This research will first study the cross-cultural communication theory (all the discussions in the paper are based on this theory). From the cross-cultural communication perspective, the paper will discus the differences between Chinese and Western diet culture in : the way of naming dishes, dietary concept, ingredients and cooking techniques. And then the research will try to find out the appropriate ways of translating Sichuan dishes.

 Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Studies at Home

Many domestic scholars explore translation methods from vocabulary level and dishes' language characteristics itself. Chen Jiaji is an important person in Chinese Cuisine translation. Chen Jiaji(1993) analyzed and summarized the characteristics of the names of Chinese cuisine in his article on the English Translation of Chinese Cuisine translation. He pided the translations into: literal literal translation; literal plus free translation;literal and free translation plus explanation; translation plus explanation. He summarized the characteristics of dish name vocabulary, word phenomena and laws as well as translation skills and methods. Huang Haixiang (1999) pointed out that the English Translation of Chinese cuisines should proceed from an accurate understanding of the cooking methods and introduced the translation for nine basic cooking methods and culinary vocabulary, summarizing three ways: literal translation, free translation and free translation plus explanation.