The Interplay Between Foreignization of Dish Name and Interactive Meaning of Visual Image in Food Documentary

A Bite of China 1, a popular food documentary with numerous food-related culture-specific items and including the interplay between subtitles and visual images, is selected as the data to be examined in this study. The purposes of this study are firstly to identify foreignization strategy in the translation of dish names based on Aixela’s model, and secondly to explore the interplay between visual images and foreignization, so as to demonstrate how visual images help to make up for the loss caused by foreignization and further facilitate the understanding of Chinese dishes and culture. Purposive sampling is employed to collect data and 112 samples on dish names with corresponding images are obtained. The findings reveal that transliteration, linguistic translation and intratextual gloss under the category of foreignization are three main translation strategies when rendering Chinese dish names into English. Apart from foreignization affecting the meaning conveyance of dish names, the results also suggest that interactive meanings of visual images play a vital role in facilitating target audiences’ understanding of Chinese dish names by providing detailed background information, whereas the connotative meanings behind Chinese dish names cannot or can hardly be obtained through the visual images or translation alone.


Introduction
In the era of globalization and with further opening up to the world, Chinese audiovisual products have made their ways into foreign markets in order to disseminate Chinese culture. Different from videotapes, fiction films, TV programs and cartoons created based on fictitious plots, documentary is a special form for utilizing the capacities of sound recording and cinematography to reproduce the physical appearance of things (Nichols, 1991). Characterized by its factuality and multimodal nature, documentary is an important channel for transmitting information and spreading culture (Zhou & Zhang, 2019). Among various types of documentaries covering geography, history, arts and other themes, the life-oriented and daily nature of documentaries relating to food are especially popular with audiences in recent years. In comparison with prosperous development of western documentary, Chinese documentary has experienced a late start and slow progress. However, the rise of a large number of documentary programs about food like A Bite of China 1 was popular on numerous media platforms and fermented by public praise since its premiere (Zhou & Zhou, 2014), in that it not only exhibits the Chinese cuisines such as ingredients and cooking methods, but also demonstrates unique charm of Chinese culture behind the cuisines.
In the light of different languages and cultures shared by China and the West, most non-Chinese viewers have to resort to translation if they want to have a better comprehension of the Chinese documentary, especially the food documentary with frequent occurrence of culture-specific dish names, which may not be familiar to viewers from non-Chinese culture. In essence, food-related items are often culture-specific and can therefore be regarded as a potential source of translation problems (Marco, 2019), because some items appearing in the source text do not have equivalent items in the target reader's cultural system or these items have different intertextual status with those in the target reader's cultural system (Aixela, 1996).
In fact, there is no doubt that food has long been included in categories of culture-specific items (Benson, 1990), thus causing obstacles in the process of translating Chinese dish names into English. Take Chinese food 饺子 (pinyin: Jiaozi) as an example. Chinese 饺子 was initially translated as "dumpling" in English, but actually they are not one-to-one equivalence. In terms of ingredients, 饺子 is usually filled with minced meat or vegetables wrapped into a thinly rolled piece of wheat dough and served with a dipping sauce made of vinegar, while "dumpling" consists of pieces of dough based on bread, flour or potatoes, and filled with meat, fish, cheese, vegetables, fruits or sweets as stuffing. With regard to the time and occasion, 饺子 is a popular dish in the northern provinces in China and eaten during the Winter Solstice and Chinese Spring Festival to celebrate the beginning of a new year, whereas "dumpling" can be eaten at any time without relating to any traditional holiday and can be found in many places like Africa, Europe, the Middle East, America and other regions. From this example, it can be seen that English "dumpling" is not exactly the same as Chinese 饺子.
Thus, the precise meaning and exotic flavor of Chinese 饺子 will be lost due to non-equivalent translation.
With the purpose of addressing these translation problems, what translation strategy should be adopted to convey the meaning and retain the original flavor is a major concern in the translation study. As Lorscher (1991) noted, translation strategy is a potentially conscious procedure for the solution of a problem which an individual is faced with when translating a text segment from one language to another. Different researchers have investigated and described various translation strategies from their diverse perspectives (Zohre, 2013), such as direct/literal translation and oblique translation proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet, global strategies and local strategies put forward by Chesterman, semantic translation and communicative translation strategy raised by Newmark and so forth. However, most translation strategies mentioned above are centered on the linguistic and textual equivalence between source text and target text, ignoring the culture elements within different languages.
As opposed to translation strategy centering on the linguistic difference between source and target texts, domestication and foreignization put forward by Lawrence Venuti are more concerned with cultural discrepancies between two different languages. Domestication is the type of translation which involves minimizing the source-text foreign elements to the target-language cultural values (Munday, 2001). Foreignization, on the other extreme, involves retaining the foreignness of the original-language text (Shuttleworth & Cowie, 1997). Venuti (1995) regarded domesticated translations as the devaluated reproductions of the original and held that foreignization should be the main strategy for cultural translation. Seeing that the main purpose of A Bite of China 1 is to spread cultural connotation inherited in Chinese culture-specific dish names (Li, 2018), foreignization is frequently used in the rendition of Chinese dish names to preserve the exoticism of Chinese culture. Therefore, foreignization is the focus in this study. Nevertheless, the notion of foreignization is a broad term that encompasses translation strategies which are more specific (Judickaite, 2009). As a result, five specific translation strategies belonging to foreignization proposed by Aixela are adopted to identify how does translator render Chinese dish names into English in A Bite of China 1.
Besides, documentary translation is an interdisciplinary study, belonging to the category of audiovisual translation limited by the space and time (Zhou & Zhang, 2019), which means viewers seldom have opportunity to reread or reconsider the content of subtitles. Although foreignization as a translation strategy in subtitles is capable of preserving and conveying the foreignness of the source culture, it tends to increase understanding difficulty for foreign viewers who lack related background knowledge about source culture. At this time, the visual images on the screen may be helpful to the target audience to better understand the program (Zhang & Wang, 2019).
To sum up, two research questions to be addressed in this paper are:

Theoretical Framework
In this paper, questions like "what specific foreignization strategy is used when translating Chinese dish names?" and "how visual images interact with subtitles to produce meaning?" will be analyzed guided by two theories and one model. Two guiding theories are foreignization and interactive meanings of visual images in combination with one model comprising specific translation strategies. The elaborations are as follows.

Foreignization
In this paper, foreignization proposed by Venuti is the emphasis, which is used to identify how Chinese dish names are foreignized into English in A Bite of China 1. In Venuti's words (1995), foreignization is an ethnodeviant pressure on target-language cultural values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad. In other words, foreignization asks a translator to get close to the author by adopting the original expressions, in order to preserve and convey the foreignness of the source language and culture (Ghafarian, Kafipour & Soori, 2016), which agrees with Venuti who believed that foreignization is a main strategy for cultural translation.

Interactive Meaning as a Meta-function in Image
Kress and van Leeuwen established visual grammar, providing the systematic and comprehensive framework for analyzing visual mode (Wang, 2016). From their points of view, visual mode can express the same meanings as language in a very different way (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Three meta-functions of image, namely, representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning are assigned to visual image. Representational meaning is to investigate how people, thing and place are displayed in an image in terms of what they are or what they do (Chueasuai, 2013); while compositional meaning emphasizes how the image is constructed, such as the layout and color. In essence, both of them attach more attention to the image itself rather than establishing a connection between image and language. However, Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) held that the interactive meaning of images is the 'writing' of what is usually called 'non-verbal communication', a 'language' shared by producers and viewers alike, which strongly demonstrates the interaction between participants in the visual world or between viewers and the framed world (Chen & Wang, 2016). Put differently, interactive meaning is closely connected with language, which justifies the rationale for studying interactive meaning as the focus of the present study instead of representative meaning or compositional meaning.
Interactive meaning comprises four dimensions: visual contact, social distance, perspective and modality. Visual contact means the ways that images directly or indirectly address their viewers: demand and offer (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006). Social distance refers to the distance of the presented image from the viewers; the further the social distance, the more distant the relationships (Cheng, 2016). Perspective signifies the selection of the angle, a 'point of view', and this implies the possibility of expressing subjective attitudes towards represented participants, human or otherwise (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Modality indicates the degree of credibility and probability to the truth values of statements about the world, which is marked by the color saturation, color differentiation, color modulation, contextualization, representation, depth, illumination and brightness (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). It is worth noting that these eight modality markers are closely related to each other and cannot be separated, hence they will be deemed as a whole when analyzing the modality of an image.

Specific Foreignization Strategies Proposed by Aixela
In the current study, due to foreignization involving many translation strategies which are much narrower in their meaning, five specific foreignization strategies created by Aixela for translating culture-specific items are presented in Table 1 as below.

Linguistic (non-cultural) Translation
The translators choose a denotatively very close reference to the original, but increase its comprehensibility by offering a target language version which can still be recognized as belonging to the cultural system of the source text.

Extratextual Gloss
The translators use footnote, endnote, glossary, commentary/translation in brackets, in italics and alike to add information.

Intratextual Gloss
The translators include their gloss as an indistinct part of the text, so as not to disturb the reader's attention.

Method
The present study is a qualitative research in nature. The material selected is the Chinese documentary A Bite of China 1 consisting of seven episodes as source text and their target English translations. This is a food-related documentary which depicts the Chinese regionalspecific dishes and their cultural underlying connotations. On the one hand, the reason behind the choice of A Bite of China 1 lies in that it has triggered an unprecedented audience climax with the debut at home and abroad (Li, 2018). On the other hand, Chinese dish names occurring extensively in this documentary pose enormous difficulties for the translation. These two rationales suited to the study focus of the present paper on the interplay between foreignization and visual images. In the process of data collection and data analysis, Chinese dish names and their matching English translations are firstly picked out to identify what specific foreignization is utilized. Secondly, each visual image matching with dish name is screenshot for the sake of analyzing their interactive meaning from four dimensions: visual contact, social distance, perspective and modality.

Findings and Discussion
After sorting out and analyzing all Chinese dish names and their English translations, it is found that there are 63 samples using foreignization. As for the specific translation strategy adopted, transliteration with 38 under the category of orthographic adaptation, linguistic (non-cultural) translation with 8 and intratextual gloss with 17 are three major strategies utilized in the rendition of Chinese dish names. There is no trace of repetition, because repetition is the main strategy for the treatment of most toponyms (Aixela, 1996), while the focus of this study is dish name rather than place name. Furthermore, given that subtitling is limited to two lines with usually 37 characters per line including blank spaces and typographical signs (Mujagic, 2013), it is impossible to add extratextual gloss within fleeting subtitles, thereby explaining the reason why extratextual gloss is not found when translating dish names.

Sample Analysis on Specific Foreignizing Translation Strategy
In order to grasp how these foreignizing translation strategies are used and pose comprehension problems for foreign viewers who are without related knowledge about Chinese culture, to name but a few samples are displayed below. ST and TT stand for source text and target text respectively in the following tables. Transliteration refers to a type of interlingual transfer in which the forms of the original (e.g. sounds, letters or words) are preserved unchanged in TT (Shuttleworth & Cowie, 1997). Put differently, a translation tells viewers the meaning of words in another language, while a transliteration only helps viewers pronounce them. In this sense, in spite of not knowing what these Chinese dishes listed in Table 2 exactly are, the Chinese language structure and expression can be introduced to target viewers. However, for target viewers who have never heard of and seen these dishes before, if just reading the transliterations without watching the corresponding images on the screen, they will know nothing about these dishes like ingredients, appearance and shape, for transliteration does not tell the viewers the meaning of the dishes except for their pronunciations. Furthermore, local dishes be popular in certain areas in China like "Tuanzi" (a regional snack commonly seen in southern China) and "Tsamba" (one kind of staple foods in Chinese Tibet, hardly been found in other places) are felt strange by Chinese people who do not live in southern China and Tibet, let alone for non-Chinese viewers. In this regard, reading transliteration alone is not helpful to foreign viewers' deeper understanding of Chinese dishes, inevitably leading to comprehension difficulties. Therefore, the supplementary function of visual images on the screen cannot be overlooked in this moment. Linguistic (non-cultural) translation refers to translating unfamiliar source item by means of a close item in denotative meaning that are easily accepted by target viewers to increase comprehensibility (Aixela, 1996). Fried lotus root sandwiches are local foods in Hubei Province in China. As for foreign countries where this dish is totally absent, it is hard for people living there to imagine what a fried lotus root sandwich looks like and tastes like. On the contrary, for foreigners especially people who eat sandwiches as their daily foods, they are more familiar with sandwiches instead of Chinese food. By using a more accepted target word "sandwich" to translate a strange Chinese dish, the vivid image of placing minced meat stuffing evenly between two slices of lotus root will jump to foreign viewers' minds. Take Chinese staple food "steamed bun" as another example. On the one hand, the word "bun" refers to a small, sometimes sweet, bread-based item or roll, which is not exactly the same as white and soft "mantou" that is made of wheat flour and eaten in northern China. On the other hand, though there is difference between "mantou" and "bun", the latter one is more acceptable for American and western viewers, at least the shape and size of "mantou" just as that of the bun can be visualized by target viewers.
In short, the advantage of linguistic (non-cultural) translation lies in its higher degree of acceptability and comprehensibility to digest dishes which exist in foreign cultures, whereas its shortcomings are also obvious. Apart from failing to present the nuances between source item and target one, this strategy is also unable to convey exotic characteristics of Chinese dishes and not conducive to cultural exchanges between China and other countries. At this point, it is imperative to attach importance to corresponding visual images for the purpose of making up for the deficiency triggered by linguistic (non-cultural) translation strategy. As the name suggests, intratextual gloss means that explanatory note is included within the text as an inseparable part. Clay Pot Rice is a typical Cantonese cuisine whose main ingredients are cured meat with rice and a few slices of green vegetables. However, it is prone to make a dull and dry impression of this dish on viewers if merely literal meaning is translated without giving additional explanation. The foreign viewers may think that the only ingredient in this dish is rice, thus leading to decreased appetite and less desire to try this dish. By contrast, offering extra information (made with cured meat) not only elucidates the ingredient but also makes this delicacy more appealing to meat lovers. Similarly, the same example applies to the dish name Yuxiang Shredded Pork. It is difficult for non-Chinese to understand what is "Yuxiang" and how "Yuxiang" tastes if just relying on its transliteration. Instead, the note provided in the bracket explains that Yuxiang is a type of flavor relating to fish taste, making it simpler for foreign viewers to comprehend. Furthermore, in the instance of Monk Jianzhen's Soy Duck, not only the literal meaning of dish is translated, but also the identity of Jianzhen is added. From the gloss "monk", even for the viewers knowing nothing about Chinese culture, it is easy for them to guess that this dish is named after a monk whose name is Jianzhen. More importantly, the English word "monk" indicates that although the denotative meaning of Soy Duck pertains to duck meat, actually this is the food for vegan because most monks stick to a strict vegetarian diet due to their religious belief.
Indeed, intratextual gloss under the category of foreignization is beneficial to the understanding of Chinese dish name and culture, while the further and profound comprehension will be acquired with the help of visual images presenting more information in detail.

Sample Analysis on Interactive Meaning of Visual Image
What has been discussed above on foreignization to convey the meaning of dish name from Chinese to English demonstrate that there are limitations when only resorting to foreignization alone. At this point, the visual image is an indispensable mode for its complementary role to foreignization. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) noted all modes are equal. They stressed that the prominence of the verbal mode does not mean that language is superior than other modes; hence, when one mode dominates, other less dominant or less researched modes are still in play (Wu, 2011). Following are some images to clarify what visual images can do to make up for the deficiencies of foreignization and how their interplay influences viewers' comprehension of Chinese dish names in A Bite of China 1.

Visual Contact
In terms of visual contact, whether it is a 'demand' image or 'offer' image depends on if there is gaze between represented participants and viewers. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), demand image refers to the image in which the represented participants directly address the viewers and demand attention from the viewers; offer image, on the contrary, is characterized by a lack of gaze. They also stated that when images which do not contain human or quasi-human participants looking directly at the viewers, this kind of image belongs to offer image and the viewers' role is that of an invisible onlooker (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). These ten figures do not contain human looking directly at the viewers, consequently, they are all offer images providing the basic information, such as ingredients, color, appearance and texture that cannot be obtained from the transliteration and literal translation. As Figure 1 shows, the shape of "Jiaozi" and small folds on it can be clearly seen, thus offering more visual information to target viewers and further promoting familiarization with Chinese food.

Social Distance
With regard to social distance, it is related to the 'size of frame'. By the choice among close shot, medium shot and long shot, the producer suggests different relations between represented participants and viewers (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006). Wu (2011) pointed out intimate/personal distance is the most frequently used visual device by utilizing close shot to narrow down the distance between the represented participants and the viewers. Close shot is defined as a motion picture shot with the camera generally emphasizing individual details such as faces, hands, feet or small objects (Edgar et al., 2010). Obviously, Figure 1 to Figure 7 are close up shots because every detail of the dishes is clearly presented. The application of close shot is capable of making the distance between Chinese foods and target viewers closer, and attracting the viewers to enter the context of delicious cuisine. Compared with close shot, medium shot is applied in Figure 8 to Figure 10 to show social distance between Chinese dishes and viewers, in that the whole dishes and the space around them are displayed. In the opinion of O'Halloran (2004), the social distance can give the viewers the best sense of reality, for it is the most familiar distance in our daily life. Illustrated by Figure 8, the food Baozi, its container and steam oven are presented in an appropriate distance, neither too close nor too far, creating a real atmosphere and context to the viewers and further leading them to the visual imaginary world to enjoy Baozi.

Perspective
As for perspective, Figure 1 to Figure 5 and Figure 7 have been photographed from horizontal angle, creating the effect of face to face interaction between Chinese dishes and viewers. More specifically, they are shot at frontal angle, which testifies Kress and van Leeuwen's statement (2006) what viewers see here is part of their world, something they are involved with. By virtue of an eye-level shot, the viewers are placed in an equal position with the unique cuisines and provided with objective information of the dishes. In other words, being involved in these foods, the viewers may produce the imaginary relations with the delicious dishes and are more likely to taste these excellent cuisines. Reversely, Figure 6 and Figure 8 to Figure 10 are shot from a vertical angle that is concerned with camera height. If represented objects are seen from a high angle, then the relation between viewers and represented objects is depicted as one in which the viewers have power over the represented objects (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Accordingly, the people who watch A Bite of China 1 are endowed with a high position to look down at these foods. Put differently, the viewers who watch this documentary have more right to choose what they want, while the dishes "Monk Jianzhen's Soy Duck", "Baozi" and "Steamed Buns" are the objects that look small and insignificant. In this sense, the viewers would be inclined to be involved in this situation as gourmet or customers.

Modality
When it comes to modality, it is closely related to the truth of the image. As mentioned previously, the modality is usually composed of modality markers working together. Therefore, eight modality markers (color saturation, color differentiation, color modulation, contextualization, representation, depth, illumination and brightness) will be analyzed on the whole instead of describing one by one. Overall speaking, ten figures all have high modality in terms of color and contextualization. Illustrating with Figure 3, the sliced lotus root is white, the pork stuffing baby pink and porcelain bowl blue and white, catching the eyes of the viewers at their first sight with clear color differentiation and color saturation. In Figure 8, the contextualization, namely detailed information about "Baozi" such as the cooking stove and bamboo or wooden utensil for steaming "Baozi", are shown to the target viewers, all of which increase the realness and vividness of the image. In addition, Figure 4 is a good match between the play of light and shade, where the foreground that is close to the viewers is highlighted with light, whereas the background and both sides that are less important is deemphasized by using shade.
It must be admitted that visual image has the function to offer additional information that the translation itself does not have, but it merely pertains to the appearance or physical outfit of the dish. As for the deeper meaning of the dish, there is little effect on explaining the connotation of Chinese dish by watching visual image or reading translation. For example, it is auspicious connotations contained in "Jiaozi" that makes it well received by Chinese people. Firstly, its shape resembles a shoe-shaped gold ingot, which embodies a connotation of bringing in wealth, fortune and the desire for amassing fortunes for common people. Secondly, "Jiaozi" also implies reunion when eaten during Chinese traditional festivals. During the family reunion occasions, family members get together, make and share "Jiaozi" with each other in peace and harmony, greatly deepening the affectionate and congenial atmosphere within the whole family. Other than "Jiaozi", the same is true in the case of "rice cake". The Chinese name of "rice cake" is "年糕", among which "年" has the same pronunciation with " 粘", which indicates gathering together; while "糕" is homonymous with "高", implying rising up step by step. Therefore, eating "rice cake" in Chinese Spring Festival means expressing everyone's expectation and best wishes for the new year. Similarly, target viewers fail to obtain the propitious meaning of "四喜丸子" when they see the English translation "Braised Pork Balls in Gravy Sauce". They can simply get the information on cooking method, ingredient, shape and seasoning of this dish through the translation, but without knowing the propitious meaning generated by "四喜". Actually, "四喜" refers to four great happenings of good luck, wealth, longevity and happiness in Chinese. A positive association with auspicious connotation will jump up to the Chinese viewers' minds when they see "四喜", whereas the same feeling and emotional suggestion cannot be obtained by the target viewers when they see the translation. In short, the connotation of Chinese dish involves Chinese culture with a long history, which needs to be learned and accumulated for target viewers if they expect a comprehensive understanding of Chinese dish and culture.

Conclusion
On the basis of sample analysis, the findings show that foreignization is the main translation strategy when rendering Chinese dish names into English in A Bite of China 1, with extensive utilization of transliteration, linguistic (non-cultural) translation and intratextual gloss. On the one hand, foreignization stands a role of preserving and conveying the foreignness of the Chinese culture; on the other hand, visual image facilitates foreign viewers' comprehension of Chinese dish names by providing some detailed information that cannot be gained through translation. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that in most cases, the underlying connotations of Chinese dishes are hard to get neither through foreignization nor visual image, because only target viewers who are equipped with Chinese cultural knowledge have the possibility to understand the certain ideas, values and beliefs contained in a Chinese dish.
The main contributions of the current paper are as follows. In terms of theoretical significance, this paper provides a new perspective and method for the study of documentary translation composed of both subtitle and other modes such as visual image. When dealing with audiovisual translation, different theories and methods from different disciplines such as translation studies, visual studies and film studies should be integrated to analyze the possible and appropriate translation strategies. Furthermore, with regard to the contribution of practical aspect, the present paper also has certain reference significance for translation teaching and training. It is necessary for translators and translation teachers to cultivate and develop the awareness of visual literacy, indicating that they should try to go beyond the separation between subtitle and visual image which are often closely intertwined in audiovisual product and should be taken equally into account in the decision-making of translation strategy.
At the same time, although this study gains in-depth insights into the research questions, it is undeniable that the present study also has limitations. Firstly, apart from limited samples, the current study is primarily concerned with interactive meaning without analyzing representational and compositional meanings. Secondly, other than visual image, other modes such as background music should also be taken into consideration for every mode is inseparable from each other in the process of creating meaning. It is recommended that more samples are supposed to be collected and analyzed for a more comprehensive and detailed way in the future study.