【雅思课外精读】为什么国外的中餐馆总是千篇一律？

　　【雅思课外精读】为什么国外的中餐馆总是千篇一律？ *注：本文摘自1月1日《史密森杂志》

　　Why Do Chinese Restaurants Have Such Similar Names?

　　为什么中餐馆的名字都如此相似？

图片来源网络

　　1. Chinese restaurants are ubiquitous across America from big cities to suburban strip malls to dusty back roads, to highway gas stations. They are frequently the heart of small towns. They offer up a familiar menu of comfort food, but also similar-sounding names. And that’s no accident. Even though the majority of the 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States are not large chain franchises but family-owned mom-and-pop shops.

　　从美国的大城市到郊区的购物中心，从尘土飞扬的乡间小路到高速公路的加油站，中国餐馆随处可见。它们是小城镇的心脏，这些中餐馆有让人熟知的菜单，餐馆名字听起来也很相似，这并非偶然。在美国有5万家中餐馆，它们大多都不是连锁经营，家庭经营的夫妻店才是主流。

　　2. “Familiarity is one of their biggest selling points,” says Cedric Yeh, who as project head of the Sweet and Sour Initiative at the National Museum of American History, studies Chinese foodways and helped put together a 2011 exhibition on Chinese food in America at the museum.

　　美国国家历史博物馆酸甜计划项目负责人塞德里克·叶(Cedric Yeh)说，“知名度是它们最大的卖点之一。”他一直致力于研究中国美食，2011年在美国举办的中国美食展览就是在他的帮助下完成的。

　　3. Many Chinese restaurant names are chosen for their auspiciousness—out of the owners’ desire for success. They include words like golden, fortune, luck and garden. In Mandarin, garden is “yuan,” a homophone for money.

　　许多中餐店取名字都是图个吉利，这主要是因为老板想要取得成功。中餐店的名字中一般都有像黄金，财富，好运和园这样的词，在普通话中，“园”通“元”，是钱的意思。

　　4. The word play, says Yeh, is usually lost on American diners. To Americans, some names may make no sense or translate in a funny way, says Yeh, whose parents had a Chinese restaurant named Jade Inn in Springfield, Massachusetts, when he was younger.

　　叶说，美国食客通常不会注意到这种文字游戏。对美国人来说，有些名字完全不知所云，翻译成英文还很滑稽。叶先生小时候，他父母在马萨诸塞州的斯普林菲尔德开了一家叫做Jade Inn(翡翠客栈)的中餐馆。

　　5. One of the words that means good fortune in Cantonese is spelled most unfortunately “fuk.” Restaurants incorporating that word have gotten lots of attention, especially in the social media era, says Yeh. “I don’t think they ever stopped and thought about why that might attract attention,” says Yeh.

　　在广东话中，好运即为“福”。叶说，名字中带有这个字的餐馆受到大量关注，尤其是在这个社交媒体时代。叶说,“我认为人们从来没有想过为什么这样的名字会引人关注。”

　　6. An online Chinese Restaurant Name Generator pokes playful fun at the stew of name possibilities, spitting out “Goose Oriental,” “Mandarin Wall,” “#1 Tso,” and “Fortune New Dynasty.” Auspicious, perhaps, but maybe not the catchiest.

　　一个在线中餐馆取名网站生成了比如“东方鹅”，“文化墙”， “左宗锋”和“财富新王朝”这样滑稽的名字。这些名字中可能大有吉兆，但是并不那么吸引人。

　　7. But Chinese restaurant names are packed with significance to Chinese people. Take “Fragrant Harbor”—the name for Hong Kong, says Andrew Coe, a Brooklyn-based author of Chop Suey, A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States. Chinese people would understand that it’s a Hong Kong-style restaurant, he says.

　　但是中国餐馆的名字对中国人来说意义重大。布鲁克林的安德鲁·科著有《炒杂烩菜：中国美食旅美文化史》一书，他说，香港的名字其实就是“芳香之港“的意思。他说，一看到“芳香之港“这家餐厅，人们就会明白这是一家港式餐厅。