Abstract

Translating food menus plays a crucial role in intercultural communication, particularly in the contexts of tourism and hospitality, where language serves not only to provide information but also to persuade, reassure, and shape cultural perceptions. Vietnamese cuisine, which is closely intertwined with cultural practices, regional identities, historical memory, and everyday social interactions, presents significant challenges when rendered into English. This study explores how distinctive cultural elements in Vietnamese food menus are represented in English and examines the translation strategies employed to balance cultural representation with communicative effectiveness. Based on a qualitative analysis of bilingual Vietnamese–English menus collected from restaurants in Vietnam and English-speaking countries, the study adopts an integrated theoretical framework combining cultural words, culturally specific items, Skopos Theory, and the domestication–foreignization dichotomy. The findings indicate that descriptive translation and functional equivalence are the dominant strategies in current practice.

Keywords: Culinary translation, culturally specific terminology, menu translation, Skopos Theory, Vietnamese cuisine.