Transcreation of Chinese heritage food labels for cross-cultural consumption: a multimodal and reception-oriented study

1 Introduction

Heritage foods cross borders as commodities, yet they also carry historically and socially situated knowledge of place, bodily practice, seasonality, memory, and identity. Such meanings do not reside in ingredients alone; they are communicated through product names, origin narratives, preparation instructions, serving conventions, visual motifs, and the everyday practices through which foods become recognizable and valued (Bessière, 1998; Csergo, 2018; Geyzen, 2014; Shahrin and Hussin, 2023). Package labels are therefore more than neutral containers of translated information. As compact communicative interfaces, they identify products, shape expectations of taste and use, signal cultural provenance, and position foods for consumers who may not share the knowledge presupposed by the source-language label (Garzone, 2017; Silayoi and Speece, 2007; Underwood et al., 2001). The cross-border circulation of heritage foods is also embedded in wider processes of globalization, cultural mobility, and heritage safeguarding. Food becomes a material site where collective identities and ideologies are negotiated, while its presentation across markets is shaped by commercial conventions and culturally variable expectations (Appadurai, 1996; Hofstede et al., 2010; LeBesco and Naccarato, 2008; Usunier and Lee, 2013; Zocchi et al., 2021).

The communicative challenge is particularly acute when a food name condenses a culturally specific category. Liangcha refers not simply to tea served cold, but to a southern Chinese herbal-beverage tradition associated with cooling, bodily balance, and everyday health maintenance. Furu denotes a family of fermented tofu products whose flavor, texture, and culinary role are not adequately conveyed by a bare lexical equivalent. Qingtuan is a green glutinous-rice food linked to spring, regional foodways, and Qingming-related memory and practice. English renderings such as “cooling tea,” “fermented bean curd,” or “green rice dumpling” may identify selected material features, but they do not necessarily help an unfamiliar consumer imagine the food's sensory qualities, use, or cultural significance. Conversely, labels that replace these names with generalized registers of wellness, naturalness, or seasonal lifestyle may appear immediately familiar while weakening connections to the product's particular history and practices. The central problem is therefore not an abstract choice between literal and free translation, but how to provide sufficient and culturally responsible access to an unfamiliar food.

Transcreation offers a productive lens for examining this problem, provided that the concept is carefully delimited. In professional and academic discourse, it has often been associated with advertising and promotional communication in which a source message is creatively reconfigured to reproduce intended rhetorical, affective, or persuasive effects for a new audience (Carreira, 2024; Díaz-Millón and Olvera-Lobo, 2023; Pedersen, 2014). Yet transcreation overlaps with translation, adaptation, localization, rewriting, and copywriting, and its boundaries remain contested. If every nonliteral solution were classified as transcreation, the concept would lose analytical precision. Here, transcreation is understood as a high-intervention, audience-oriented mode of cross-cultural mediation in which verbal and nonverbal resources may be selectively retained, explained, rearranged, or newly created to support an intended communicative experience. This definition locates transcreation within the broader field of translation while distinguishing it from local paraphrase or isolated lexical adaptation.

This delimitation reflects a broader shift within Translation Studies. Earlier equivalence-oriented models foregrounded correspondence and transfer (Catford, 1965; Nida, 1964), whereas later scholarship emphasized rewriting, cultural positioning, negotiation, identity, ethics, and translator agency (Bassnett and Lefevere, 1998; Cronin, 2006; Eco, 2001; Katan, 2016; Pym, 2012; Tymoczko, 2007; Venuti, 2017). Bhabha's (1994) account of cultural hybridity further cautions against treating source and target cultures as fixed containers, while ecological approaches extend attention beyond isolated verbal transfer to relations among language, material environments, and cultural systems (Cronin, 2022).

Food packaging makes this distinction especially important because meaning is produced multimodally. A pinyin name may appear alongside Chinese characters, an English descriptor, ingredient imagery, a serving suggestion, a heritage narrative, or a minimalist wellness design, and each resource reshapes the interpretation of the others. A culturally specific name accompanied by a concise explanation and a use cue, for example, offers a different form of access from the same name presented without context. Images can clarify ingredients or consumption practices, but they may also function decoratively and encourage a generalized reading of cultural difference. Multimodal approaches therefore focus on the co-articulation of wording, typography, color, imagery, layout, and information hierarchy rather than treating the English product name as an isolated translation unit (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006; O’Hagan and Mangiron, 2013; Spence and Velasco, 2018).

A purely text-centered account also cannot establish a label's effects from design features alone. Producers may intend a Chinese term to signal authenticity or a modern visual style to signal accessibility, yet consumers can interpret the same cue differently. Reception is shaped by prior familiarity, expectations surrounding ethnic foods, perceived risk, sensory imagination, and the relationship between verbal and visual information. Consumer-oriented research suggests that authenticity is better understood as a judgment formed through perceived cues than as an intrinsic property of an object, and that cultural familiarity can alter the relationships among authenticity, comprehensibility, and liking (Jin and Hwang, 2024; Le et al., 2022). A reception-oriented study of transcreation must therefore ask not only what a label retains or changes, but also what interpretive work it enables and how participants account for their responses.

These conceptual and empirical issues are examined through a qualitative study of English-facing labels for liangcha, furu, and qingtuan. Here, “English-facing” refers to packaging and consumer materials that use English to address international or non-Chinese readers in the sampled retail and online contexts; it does not imply a single, homogeneous “English-language market.” The three cases were selected because they pose contrasting mediation problems involving bodily knowledge, fermented sensory experience and everyday use, and seasonal-ritual memory. Multimodal analysis of 36 packaging samples representing 24 brands or source entities was combined with semi-structured interviews involving 15 English-speaking adults in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. This design enables comparison between the label configurations identified in the corpus and the meanings, uncertainties, and authenticity judgments articulated by participants.

Three terms carry specific operational meanings in this article. Transcreation denotes coordinated, audience-oriented reconfiguration across verbal and visual resources rather than any departure from word-for-word translation. Cultural framing refers to the selective foregrounding and organization of information—such as origin, ingredients, bodily function, serving practice, seasonality, or heritage—through which a label invites a particular understanding of the product. Edible culture serves only as a concise descriptor for cultural knowledge, memory, and practice materialized in food and consumption; it does not imply that culture is homogeneous, fixed, or reducible to a commodity. Together, these definitions make it possible to examine how packaging mediates cultural specificity without assuming that a single label can preserve a complete or uncontested cultural meaning.

The study is guided by the following research questions: The article contributes conceptually, methodologically, and empirically. Conceptually, it positions transcreation as a degree of coordinated semiotic intervention within translation and cross-cultural mediation, distinguishing it from translation in general, isolated adaptation, localization, and paraphrase. Methodologically, it links multimodal packaging analysis with reception data instead of inferring communicative effects from labels alone. Empirically, it shows how combinations of source-culture terms, explanations, sensory and usage cues, and visual framing shape the accessibility and perceived cultural grounding of three Chinese heritage foods in the contexts examined. The aim is not to identify a universally optimal labeling formula, but to explain when cultural difference becomes interpretable, when explanation remains insufficient, and when market-oriented reframing becomes culturally detached.

• RQ1: What verbal and visual label-mediation configurations are used in English-facing labels for liangcha, furu, and qingtuan, and how do these configurations negotiate cultural specificity and communicative accessibility?
• RQ2: How do English-speaking participants with different levels of prior familiarity interpret these configurations in relation to product comprehension, sensory expectation, affective response, and perceived authenticity?
• RQ3: What do the relationships between label configurations and participant responses reveal about a reception-oriented account of transcreation in cross-cultural heritage-food communication?

2 Theoretical framework

2.1 Transcreation and its boundaries

Translation, adaptation, localization, paraphrase, and transcreation are treated here as overlapping practices that differ in scope and degree of intervention rather than as wholly discrete activities. Translation ranges from close semantic transfer to extensive functional reformulation; adaptation modifies culture-bound, rhetorical, or formal elements; and localization addresses broader linguistic, technical, regulatory, and market conventions. For the present analysis, however, transcreation is used specifically as an analytical concept for examining coordinated semiotic reconfiguration in completed labels. Because the study does not observe translators’ or designers’ decision-making, it does not infer intentional production processes from finished artifacts. This distinction limits the claim to what can be established from label-side evidence and participant reception.

This delimitation avoids two analytical problems. Creativity, which is present in all translation, cannot by itself define transcreation; nor should every instance of pinyin retention, descriptive addition, or visual change automatically be labeled transcreative. In this study, the analytical question is whether a completed label displays coordinated semiotic reconfiguration that offers particular resources for recognition, sensory imagination, evaluation, and use. Such a configuration may retain a source term, add a sensory descriptor, place the product in a consumption context, or combine wording and imagery in ways that foreground particular cultural meanings. It may also replace a source-culture concept with a target-market register of wellness or lifestyle. These are analyzed as observable configurations of the finished artifact, not as evidence of the intentions that produced them.

Accordingly, heritage-food-label transcreation is defined here, for analytical purposes, as coordinated, audience-oriented reconfiguration across verbal, visual, sensory, cultural, and usage-related resources in a completed label. “Coordinated” emphasizes that meaning is organized across modes rather than by a translated name alone. “Audience-oriented” is evaluated through reception rather than presumed from producer intention: the analysis asks how recipients understand, question, ignore, or rework the resources made available by the label. “Reconfiguration” allows for retention, explanation, rearrangement, and substitution without assuming that maximal change is preferable. Semantic preservation therefore serves as a low-intervention comparison point on a broader mediation continuum; retaining liangcha, furu, or qingtuan may protect cultural visibility, but retention alone is not treated as evidence of transcreation.

2.2 Multimodal label mediation and cultural framing

Food labels are multimodal ensembles in which linguistic and visual resources operate under severe spatial constraints. Product names, descriptors, ingredient statements, preparation instructions, brand narratives, typography, color, images, emblems, and layout are perceived relationally. Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) visual grammar is particularly relevant because it foregrounds representational choices, viewer relations, and compositional salience. Packaging research likewise shows that imagery, color, and information hierarchy influence attention, expectation, and product evaluation (Silayoi and Speece, 2007; Spence and Velasco, 2018; Underwood et al., 2001). The implication for translation research is that the unit of mediation is not simply a source word and its English equivalent, but the label as a structured semiotic whole.

Evidence from other culturally and multimodally complex domains similarly shows that meaning depends on genre, interaction, image, and audience expectation rather than on lexical substitution alone (Chiaro and Rossato, 2015; O’Sullivan, 2020). Packaging studies further connect visual composition with emotional response and multisensory product expectation (Norman, 2004; Velasco and Spence, 2019).

The analytical framework addresses four interrelated planes. Naming concerns whether a label retains pinyin or Chinese characters, provides a literal category, adds a descriptive name, or replaces the source term. Explanatory and practical framing captures information about ingredients, taste, texture, bodily associations, preparation, serving, and consumption occasion. Visual framing examines how typography, color, ingredient imagery, serving scenes, festival motifs, heritage emblems, and global minimalist aesthetics make selected meanings salient. Intermodal relations concern whether verbal and visual resources reinforce one another, compensate for missing information, create productive ambiguity, or direct interpretation in different ways.

Cultural framing is central because no package can present every history, practice, and disagreement associated with a heritage food; selection is unavoidable. A liangcha package may foreground herbs and refreshment while backgrounding traditional concepts of internal heat; a furu label may emphasize fermentation and serving use while omitting regional variation; and a qingtuan label may highlight green color and spring seasonality while saying little about Qingming remembrance. Cultural framing thus refers to the selective organization of verbal and visual cues that makes some dimensions of a food more available for interpretation than others. The concept is descriptive rather than evaluative: although cultural selection cannot be avoided, a particular selection can be assessed in relation to accuracy, clarity, cultural grounding, and the responses it elicits.

A multimodal perspective also avoids treating source-culture visibility and communicative clarity as products of separate elements. Chinese characters may index provenance without explaining use; ingredient imagery may clarify material composition without conveying ritual meaning; and a serving suggestion may reduce practical uncertainty while shifting attention away from history. The analytical task is therefore to determine how resources work together. A culturally specific term supported by a concise English explanation and a relevant serving image creates a different interpretive pathway from the same term surrounded only by decorative motifs. The former supports practical and cultural legibility, whereas the latter may signal origin without making the food intelligible.

2.3 Reception, cultural familiarity, and perceived authenticity

A reception-oriented framework begins from the premise that encoded meanings do not determine audience interpretation. Hall's (1980) encoding/decoding model is useful because it conceptualizes communication as a relationship between structured messages and situated acts of interpretation. Applied to food packaging, a producer's intended cues of heritage, naturalness, or accessibility may be accepted, reworked, or rejected by consumers. One participant may read a pinyin term as culturally grounded, while another finds it uninformative or strategically exotic; similarly, a modern English descriptor may appear helpful to one reader and generic to another. Communicative effectiveness must therefore be examined through recipients’ accounts of how they understood a label, what they inferred about the food, and which cues shaped those inferences.

Reception is examined across four related dimensions. Product comprehension concerns whether participants can identify the food and understand how it is used. Sensory expectation encompasses anticipated taste, texture, aroma, temperature, and intensity. Affective response includes curiosity, trust, attraction, hesitation, and distance. Cultural interpretation concerns how participants understand the product's cultural specificity, history, and relationship to contemporary marketing. Although analytically distinguishable, these dimensions are empirically intertwined: insufficient use information may generate hesitation, a concrete sensory description may foster trust, and highly stylized cultural motifs may create interest while raising doubts about whether the package is genuinely informative.

Within this framework, authenticity is treated as a participant-attributed, context-dependent judgment rather than an inherent property guaranteed by Chinese characters, traditional imagery, or a source-language name. Consumer-oriented research indicates that authenticity judgments arise from multiple cues whose meanings depend on existing knowledge and cultural familiarity (Le et al., 2022). Research on ethnic foods further suggests that traditional and localized presentations are evaluated differently according to consumer familiarity, and that perceived authenticity and liking do not necessarily move together (Jin and Hwang, 2024). These findings caution against assigning fixed authenticity values to label configurations before examining reception.

Perceived authenticity refers here to the degree and manner in which participants judge a label to present the food as culturally grounded, credible, and connected to recognizable practices or histories. The definition allows authenticity to remain negotiated and multidimensional. Participants may value a retained Chinese name, the specificity of an origin narrative, a realistic serving context, or an explanation that does not conceal unfamiliar features; they may also question labels that deploy cultural signs decoratively without substantive information. Prior familiarity is therefore treated not merely as demographic background, but as an interpretive resource that shapes what participants recognize, what requires explanation, and which forms of mediation appear respectful or credible.

Accessibility is defined in parallel terms. It does not mean maximum simplification or immediate liking, but the degree to which a label provides sufficient verbal and visual support for an intended reader to form a workable understanding of the product and its consumption context. Authenticity and accessibility are therefore not universal opposites on a fixed scale. Explanation can make a culturally specific term more accessible without diminishing its cultural grounding, whereas a familiar replacement may remain inaccessible when it is vague about taste or use. Their relationship must be established empirically for particular products, audiences, and market contexts.

2.4 Operational framework for the present study

Three recurrent label-mediation configurations are treated as positions on an analytical continuum rather than as mutually exclusive or ranked categories. Semantic preservation is the lowest-intervention configuration: it retains a source-culture term, pinyin form, Chinese characters, or a close literal rendering with limited contextual support. Its analytical value lies in revealing what cultural visibility can—and cannot—accomplish without extensive mediation. Cultural recontextualization retains identifiable source-culture elements while adding explanatory, sensory, narrative, or usage-based cues that place the food in an interpretable context. It corresponds most directly to the study's definition of transcreation because it coordinates retention with purposeful reformulation across modes. Symbolic substitution replaces or backgrounds culturally specific terms and associations with broader categories, poetic naming, wellness discourse, naturalness, lifestyle language, or other target-oriented frames. Although it may involve substantial creative intervention, its cultural consequences depend on the information and relationships that are lost or newly created.

Individual packages may combine these configurations. A label can retain liangcha as the product name, describe it as an herbal drink, and adopt a global wellness aesthetic. Assigning a dominant configuration does not erase such hybridity; instead, it identifies the arrangement that organizes the label's primary communicative proposition. Dominance was assessed through naming, explanatory content, visual salience, and implied use rather than through any single word, and ambiguous cases required explicit justification against the operational definitions.

The framework links label-side and reception-side analysis without assuming a direct causal relationship. RQ1 identifies how verbal and visual resources are configured and which cultural meanings are foregrounded or omitted. RQ2 examines how participants use those resources to construct product knowledge, sensory expectations, affective responses, and authenticity judgments. RQ3 compares the two bodies of evidence to clarify what a reception-oriented account contributes to transcreation theory. No configuration is presumed to be universally superior; the question is how particular configurations are taken up as meaningful access for particular participants, products, and communicative conditions.

3 Materials and methods

3.1 Research design and alignment between research questions and methods

An interpretive qualitative design was used to examine heritage-food labeling as both a multimodal communicative practice and a situated act of audience interpretation. Two complementary bodies of evidence were brought together. The packaging corpus revealed how product names, explanatory copy, visual composition, and cultural cues were configured for English-facing communication, while semi-structured interviews showed how participants drew on those resources when forming expectations about product identity, taste, use, cultural grounding, and authenticity. Treating labels and their reception as analytically connected avoids attributing effects to design features without examining whether recipients actually mobilized those features in interpretation. Consistent with qualitative research principles in Translation Studies, the design makes explicit the relationships among the research questions, data selection, analytical units, interpretive procedures, and boundaries of the claims (Saldanha and O’Brien, 2013).

The design was structured around the three research questions rather than a predetermined hierarchy of configurations. RQ1 required a systematic account of the verbal and visual resources present in the labels; RQ2 required reception data capable of revealing comprehension, sensory expectation, affective response, and perceived authenticity; and RQ3 depended on comparison between the two datasets. The integrated design therefore supports analytical explanation rather than statistical generalization or causal inference. Table 1 summarizes the alignment among the research questions, evidence, and analytical procedures.

Table 1. Alignment of research questions, data sources, and analytical procedures.

3.2 Case selection and construction of the packaging corpus

The study focused on liangcha (凉茶), furu (腐乳), and qingtuan (青团), purposively selected to vary the kinds of cultural knowledge that an English-facing label must mediate. Liangcha is associated with southern Chinese herbal-beverage traditions and culturally specific understandings of cooling, balance, and everyday bodily care. Furu presents a different challenge: unfamiliar fermentation, strong sensory expectations, and a culinary role that is difficult to infer from the product name alone. Qingtuan introduces a seasonal and ritual dimension through its association with spring, regional foodways, and Qingming-related memory. The comparison therefore spans bodily knowledge, fermented sensory practice, and seasonal-ritual heritage. It does not claim to represent the full range of Chinese foods; its value lies in showing how contrasting forms of cultural embeddedness generate different labeling demands (Table 2).

Table 2. Case-selection rationale and comparative dimensions.

The packaging corpus comprised 36 English-facing samples—12 from each food category—representing 24 brands or source entities. A source entity was defined as the identifiable producer, retailer, catalog, or online publication source from which a distinct English-facing presentation was collected when conventional brand attribution was unavailable or inapplicable. Materials were gathered between January 2023 and August 2024 from Asian supermarkets, cross-border e-commerce platforms, official brand websites, export-oriented catalogs, and English-language retail pages in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Because qingtuan circulates seasonally, relevant materials were concentrated in the March–May retail periods of 2023 and 2024, although English-facing brand and e-commerce materials continued to be monitored through August 2024. As noted above, English-facing denotes the use of English for international or non-Chinese readers in the sampled contexts rather than a single, homogeneous English-language market. Stable case identifiers were assigned by category: L01–L12 for liangcha, F01–F12 for furu, and Q01–Q12 for qingtuan. These identifiers are summarized in the supplementary corpus overview and remain linked to the case-level analytical matrix.

Inclusion was determined by analytical relevance rather than market share. Each sample had to belong to one of the three product categories, contain English information directed toward non-Chinese or international readers, present legible verbal or visual content, and include at least one feature relevant to cross-cultural mediation, such as a translated or transliterated name, explanatory copy, serving information, a heritage narrative, or culturally marked imagery. Where front and back panels or closely linked online product materials were available, they were treated as a single analytical case because interpretation often depended on the relationship among naming, explanation, and imagery rather than on one panel alone. Duplicate images and listings that reproduced the same communicative configuration were excluded.

Each case was entered into a structured matrix recording the Chinese source term, English rendering, product description, ingredient and taste information, preparation or serving guidance, visual composition, placement of Chinese characters, cultural motifs, implied audience, and the meanings foregrounded or omitted. Source type, collection context, and date were recorded alongside these features. Physical packages and online product pages were retained as distinct source formats because they differ in spatial constraints, information capacity, and reading sequence. The corpus was not designed to test systematic format effects; instead, source format was considered when interpreting the communicative resources available in each case. This documentation allowed later coding decisions to be traced to specific label configurations rather than to decontextualized examples (Table 3).

Table 3. Composition of the packaging corpus and coded features.

3.3 Unit of analysis and multimodal coding procedure

The unit of analysis was the complete English-facing label presentation available for each sample rather than an isolated translated word. Product naming was examined in relation to descriptors, ingredient statements, taste and texture language, preparation or serving instructions, short brand narratives, Chinese characters, typography, color, imagery, layout, and information hierarchy. Intermodal relations were also central: verbal and visual resources could reinforce one another, compensate for missing information, create productive ambiguity, or direct interpretation in different ways. A serving image, for example, may clarify the practical role of furu, whereas calligraphy may index Chinese provenance without explaining how the product is consumed.

Coding drew on Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) multimodal framework, adapted to the study’s translation and reception questions. The matrix was read across four connected planes: naming, explanatory and practical framing, visual framing, and intermodal relations. Cultural framing was coded through the dimensions selected for emphasis, including origin, ingredients, bodily associations, sensory qualities, occasion, memory, and everyday use. Absence was treated as analytically meaningful alongside presence. A qingtuan label that foregrounded greenness and sweetness while omitting Qingming-related context, for instance, was distinguished from one that paired the source term with a concise seasonal explanation.

The three recurrent label-mediation configurations were applied as positions on an analytical continuum. Semantic preservation retained pinyin, Chinese characters, or close literal renderings with limited contextual support and served as the lowest-intervention comparison point. Cultural recontextualization retained identifiable source-culture elements while adding explanatory, sensory, narrative, or usage-based cues that made the product more interpretable. Symbolic substitution replaced or backgrounded culturally specific names and associations through broader categories, poetic copy, wellness discourse, naturalness, or lifestyle-oriented language. The configurations were neither assumed to be mutually exclusive nor treated as a fixed quality ranking; their purpose was to describe how a package organized its primary communicative proposition (Table 4).

Table 4. Operational coding framework for label-mediation configurations.

Coding proceeded iteratively. An initial pass identified verbal and visual resources without assigning an overall configuration. A second pass interpreted how those resources worked together and assigned a dominant configuration only when the package's organizing proposition was sufficiently clear. Hybrid cases remained documented in the analytical notes even when a dominant code was required for cross-case comparison. A label that retained liangcha, added the descriptor herbal drink, and adopted a global wellness aesthetic illustrates the issue: the name suggested preservation, whereas the explanatory copy and visual framing pointed toward recontextualization or substitution. Classification therefore considered which elements were most salient, what understanding of the product the package enabled, and whether culturally specific meaning was explained or merely aestheticized.

Because one researcher conducted the coding, disagreement referred not to negotiation between coders but to competing interpretations within the coding process and potential inconsistency across cycles. A decision log recorded operational definitions, uncertain cases, reasons for assigning or revising codes, and instances in which verbal and visual evidence pointed in different directions. After a two-week interval, a delayed recoding check was conducted on a 25% subset of previously coded qualitative material, and second-cycle decisions were compared with the original coding; cases already marked as ambiguous were then revisited against the refined definitions. This procedure is reported as an intrarater consistency check rather than as intercoder reliability, and no stronger reliability claim is made.

3.4 Participant sampling and interview procedure

Reception was examined through semi-structured interviews with 15 English-speaking adults, five in each of three sampled contexts: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Recruitment was purposive and criterion-based. Eligible participants were adults able to discuss unfamiliar or partly familiar food packaging in English; professional expertise in Chinese–English translation, food branding, or packaging design was not sought because the study aimed to approximate nonspecialist consumer interpretation. The three settings introduced variation in likely exposure to Chinese and broader Asian food cultures, but the sample was not designed for national comparison or statistical representation. Its size was appropriate to the study's focused interpretive aims: to obtain detailed accounts across contrasting label configurations and familiarity levels rather than estimate prevalence or compare national populations. The specific stimuli and tightly defined research questions provided sufficient information for cross-case qualitative analysis while remaining consistent with the study's bounded claims. Stimulus selection was purposive: label images and excerpts were chosen to ensure analytical coverage of all three food categories and the three dominant mediation configurations, rather than to create a balanced experimental comparison of configuration effects. The study did not treat stimulus sequence as an experimental manipulation; possible stimulus-set and presentation-order influences are therefore treated as design limitations rather than controlled effects.

Participants ranged from 22 to 49 years of age; eight identified as female and seven as male. Six reported regular familiarity with Chinese or broader Asian foods, six described their familiarity as occasional, and three reported limited prior familiarity. These categories reflected self-reported frequency and breadth of exposure rather than a standardized familiarity scale. Familiarity was retained as an interpretive variable because it could shape whether participants recognized a product term, inferred a serving context, or required further explanation. Demographic information was reported in aggregate to minimize identification risk. The three familiarity categories were used as sensitizing comparative descriptors rather than statistically comparable groups. Because the limited-familiarity subgroup comprised only three participants, observations from that subgroup were treated as case-based evidence and were not used to support population-level or prevalence claims.

Interviews were conducted online in English between September and November 2024 and lasted approximately 25–45 min. Electronic informed consent was obtained before each interview, and participants could decline audio recording. With permission, interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim; otherwise, detailed contemporaneous notes were expanded immediately after the session. All identifying information was removed during transcription and analysis, and quotations were attributed only through broad, non-identifying contextual descriptors (e.g., sampled context), rather than personal identifiers. The distinction between verbatim transcripts and expanded notes was retained in the audit trail to support analytical traceability. Only material retained as verbatim transcript is presented in quotation marks in the Results; material based on expanded contemporaneous notes is paraphrased rather than reconstructed as direct quotation (Table 5).

Table 5. Participant sample and interview design.

3.5 Analysis of interview data

Interview data were analyzed thematically following the recursive logic of Braun and Clarke (2006). Initial coding remained close to participants’ language and interpretive reasoning. Statements were coded for what participants believed the product to be, the evidence supporting that conclusion, and any residual uncertainty. Four related dimensions were distinguished: product comprehension, sensory expectation, affective response, and cultural interpretation, including participant-attributed authenticity. Although analytically separable, these dimensions often co-occurred. A missing use cue could generate hesitation, whereas a concrete description of fermentation or serving practice could contribute to both comprehension and trust.

A second analytical layer focused on the resources participants mobilized. Comments were linked to product names, ingredient descriptions, serving suggestions, cultural narratives, Chinese characters, color, imagery, layout, and prior knowledge. The analysis then compared how similar cues operated across participants with different levels of familiarity and across the three mediation configurations. Evaluative orientations—positive, neutral, mixed, or negative—were recorded only as descriptive aids; they did not replace interpretation of why a response occurred and were not used as inferential measures of consumer preference.

Themes were developed through continued movement between individual cases and cross-case patterns, with particular attention to responses that complicated the emerging account. A source-culture term could be valued as credible by one participant yet dismissed as uninformative by another; a modern visual style could make a product approachable without necessarily being judged culturally superficial. Such divergent readings were retained because they clarified the contextual and negotiated character of accessibility and authenticity rather than representing noise to be removed.

3.6 Integration, triangulation, reflexivity, and resolution of ambiguous cases

Integration took place after the packaging and interview datasets had been analyzed on their own terms. The study used methodological and data-source triangulation: multimodal analysis identified the meanings and affordances encoded in each label, while interviews showed whether those affordances became available to participants. Because one researcher completed the coding, this was not investigator triangulation. Agreement between the datasets was not assumed. When a furu package included a serving suggestion, for example, the label could be coded as providing practical recontextualization; reception analysis then examined whether participants actually used that cue to infer how the product should be consumed. When they did not, design intention was not treated as an achieved communicative effect.

Triangulation also sharpened interpretation when the two forms of evidence diverged. Chinese characters and heritage motifs might support a label-side reading of strong cultural visibility, yet participants could describe the same arrangement as decorative or insufficiently informative. Conversely, a restrained modern design might initially appear culturally thinned but still be judged credible when its copy supplied precise information about ingredients, use, and origin. These contrasts prevented authenticity or accessibility from being assigned directly to any visual feature. Claims were made only when label configurations and participant accounts could be traced together, while discrepant responses were reported as evidence of negotiated meaning rather than forced into a uniform conclusion.

Reflexivity was particularly important because the researcher's familiarity with Chinese heritage foods provided contextual knowledge while creating a risk of overestimating what unfamiliar readers would recognize. The decision log therefore documented expectations formed before the interviews, points at which participant interpretations diverged from those expectations, and reasons for revising a category or claim. No configuration was treated as inherently superior. Semantic preservation could work well for culturally knowledgeable readers, and symbolic substitution could be useful in some market contexts; cultural recontextualization was evaluated through the specific support it provided, not through a presumption that more explanation was always better.

Ambiguity was resolved by returning to the complete communicative configuration. When verbal and visual resources supported different readings, decisions considered their salience, information hierarchy, practical usefulness, and relationship to the source-culture concept. Borderline cases remained documented in the matrix even when a dominant code was required for comparison. The same principle guided interview interpretation: mixed responses were not reduced to a single attitude when a participant simultaneously expressed curiosity, uncertainty, and respect for cultural specificity. This explicit treatment of ambiguity enhances transparency while remaining consistent with the study's interpretive character.

3.7 Ethical considerations and methodological scope

Participation was voluntary, electronic informed consent was obtained, and participants could decline audio recording without consequence. Transcripts and expanded interview notes were anonymized, and quotations were attributed only through broad, non-identifying contextual descriptors rather than personal identifiers. The study involved no intervention and collected only the demographic information required for interpretation. Ethical safeguards therefore centered on informed consent, the right to withdraw or decline recording, confidentiality, anonymization, and restricted use of participant information.

The design has clearly defined boundaries. The purposive corpus covers three food categories and combines physical packaging with online consumer-facing materials, formats that differ in spatial constraints, information capacity, and browsing sequence. Although source format was retained in the analytical matrix, the corpus was not designed to test systematic differences between physical and digital presentation or to establish the prevalence of any configuration across Chinese export packaging. The interview sample offers detailed accounts of interpretive processes but does not represent the populations of the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, or English-speaking consumers more broadly. Responses were shaped by the stimuli shown, participants’ prior exposure to Asian foods, possible presentation-order and stimulus-set influences, and the online interview setting. Coding and interpretation were conducted by one researcher; delayed recoding supports consistency but does not provide intercoder reliability. The findings should therefore be read as analytically transferable propositions about how label resources can support or obstruct interpretation, not as market-wide estimates of preference or effectiveness.

4 Results: from label configuration to audience interpretation

This section integrates the multimodal analysis of English-facing packaging with the interview data, treating transcreation as a relationship between encoded label resources and situated audience interpretation. The analysis does not assume that a Chinese term, heritage motif, or modern English descriptor carries a fixed effect. Labels acquired meaning through combinations of naming, explanatory copy, visual salience, sensory suggestion, and use cues; participants interpreted those combinations through prior familiarity, uncertainty, curiosity, and judgments of cultural credibility. Semantic preservation, cultural recontextualization, and symbolic substitution therefore function as positions on an analytical continuum rather than rigid categories. Individual packages frequently combined them, and several of the most revealing cases were hybrid: a retained Chinese term might appear within a generic wellness design, while an apparently global visual style could be anchored by precise information about ingredients, origin, or use.

The results are organized around the interpretive work that each configuration enabled or obstructed. Semantic preservation foregrounded cultural visibility but often required unfamiliar readers to undertake more interpretive labor than the label itself supported. A recurrent pattern in the interviews was that cultural recontextualization accompanied clearer participant accounts when it retained a source-culture marker while adding compact information about taste, texture, occasion, or practical consumption. Symbolic substitution could facilitate initial approach, but its appeal became unstable when the substituted expression was too broad to explain what the food was or why it mattered culturally. Across all three configurations, perceived authenticity emerged as a negotiated judgment rather than a property contained in any single sign. Participants neither simply rewarded Chineseness nor rejected adaptation; they looked for a credible relationship among name, image, use, and cultural context.

4.1 Multimodal patterns in English-facing label mediation

The packaging corpus showed that label translation rarely operated through a product name alone. Even the shortest front labels drew meaning from surrounding cues: Chinese characters, romanized names, literal categories, ingredient lists, preparation notes, flavor descriptors, brand narratives, color, typography, serving images, and the relative prominence assigned to each element. A package presenting furu as a jarred condiment beside a serving suggestion communicated a different product logic from one that merely transliterated the name. Liangcha could likewise be positioned as a culturally specific herbal beverage, a functional drink associated with balance and refreshment, or a generic wellness product, depending on how verbal and visual cues were combined. Qingtuan displayed the same interdependence of modes: green color and spring imagery helped establish seasonality but did not necessarily communicate Qingming-related memory unless the label or surrounding copy made that relationship explicit.

Table 6 synthesizes the principal pattern across the corpus and interviews. The examples are generalized configurations rather than brand-by-brand evaluations because the analysis concerns the communicative work of label configurations, not the ranking of individual producers. The table also clarifies the evidential boundary of each claim: configurations were identified from the packaging corpus, whereas reception claims were made only when participant accounts showed how a cue was used, ignored, questioned, or reinterpreted. Stable sample identifiers (L01–L12, F01–F12, and Q01–Q12) are summarized in Supplementary Table S1; exact source metadata, archived label materials, observed wording, and case-level coding rationales remain linked to those identifiers in the author's analytical matrix.

Table 6. Label-mediation configurations, evidence base, and reception patterns.

The pattern summarized in Table 6 is qualitative rather than a numerical ranking of configurations. It shows how label resources became interpretive resources. A Chinese name could support understanding when accompanied by a category cue, sensory descriptor, or use context; without such support, the same name could remain opaque. Participants sometimes found a familiar English phrase easier to approach, yet it could also become too abstract to guide consumption. Across several accounts, cultural difference became more interpretable when it was made legible rather than hidden or left unexplained (Figure 1).

4.2 Semantic preservation: cultural visibility and the burden of recognition

Semantic preservation was most evident when labels retained forms such as liangcha, furu, or qingtuan, sometimes alongside Chinese characters or a literal English category. By resisting complete domestication, this configuration kept culturally specific food names visible in English-facing communication. For some participants, that visibility mattered: untranslated or minimally translated terms suggested that the product had not been fully repackaged as a generic foreign-market commodity. Preservation could therefore function as a sign of cultural grounding, particularly for participants already familiar with Chinese or broader Asian foods.

The same configuration exposed a limitation in comprehension. Participants unfamiliar with furu could not reliably infer whether it was eaten as a main ingredient, spread, condiment, or fermented side dish. A label listing soybeans, rice wine, chili, or salt supplied accurate information but did not answer practical questions about flavor intensity, expected texture, or suitable accompaniments. One UK-based participant captured this difficulty in response to a minimally explained furu label: “Furu—that's new to me. If there's no description or picture, I can't really imagine what it is or how I would use it. It sounds interesting, but also a bit inaccessible.” The comment illustrates how semantic preservation could generate curiosity without converting it into usable product understanding.

Liangcha revealed a related problem. Although cooling tea appears lexically transparent, its cultural logic is not self-evident to readers unfamiliar with the bodily framework of cooling, balance, or internal heat. Some participants assumed that the phrase simply referred to a beverage served cold; others interpreted it through a broad wellness vocabulary. Neither reading was entirely implausible, but both reduced the culturally specific concept to a more familiar category. Chinese characters and herbal motifs strengthened visual provenance without fully explaining how the drink should be understood. The label became recognizably Chinese without necessarily becoming intelligible as a Chinese herbal-beverage practice.

Qingtuan extended the issue beyond product function to seasonality and ritual memory. Retaining the name qingtuan preserved a connection to a culturally specific food category and, for participants who recognized it, invoked associations that translations such as green rice dumpling or green cake could not replace. For unfamiliar participants, however, the name alone did not clarify whether the product was a dessert, festival food, snack, or regional specialty. Visual greenness helped but often directed attention toward naturalness or flavor rather than Qingming-related remembrance. The implication is not that semantic preservation should be avoided, but that it requires a supporting structure. It works best when readers already possess relevant knowledge or when the label provides enough guidance to prevent them from having to guess the product's function and cultural frame.

4.3 Cultural recontextualization: designing access without erasing difference

Cultural recontextualization emerged as one recurrent pathway for negotiating source visibility and target readability in the present qualitative dataset. By retaining a culturally specific marker while providing an entry point into product identity, sensory expectation, and use, it provided resources through which unfamiliar foods could become more imaginable. A label such as Chinese fermented bean curd, paired with a phrase such as a savory condiment used with congee and hotpot, does more than translate furu: it locates the food within a recognizable culinary situation. Readers can infer that the product is fermented, savory, condiment-like, and eaten with particular foods. Several participants described this practical framing as clear and useful because they used it to resolve uncertainty without pretending that the product was already familiar.

Explanations described as useful were compact and concrete rather than encyclopedic. They supplied enough context to enable the next act of interpretation. For furu, serving cues such as congee, rice, noodles, or hotpot were used by participants to infer scale and function; in these accounts, the food was less likely to be imagined as a large tofu block or undefined fermented substance, but as an intense condiment used in small amounts. For liangcha, expressions such as herbal cooling tea or a traditional Chinese herbal drink associated with balance and refreshment provided a partial frame for the culturally specific idea of cooling. Such formulations do not fully translate the concept of internal heat and should avoid unsupported medical claims, but they place the beverage within a meaningful relationship among herbs, bodily comfort, and everyday consumption.

Several participants characterized these labels as clearer, more respectful, and more trustworthy. One US-based participant described a culturally recontextualized example as “not just translating the name, but telling a little story about how it fits into life.” The observation identifies what participants valued: not length, ornament, or simplification, but situational intelligibility. In these accounts, labels were experienced as more accessible when participants could use them to imagine when a product is consumed, what it might taste like, and how it belongs to a set of practices. Multimodality was especially important here. Ingredient imagery supported material recognition, serving images reduced uncertainty about use, Chinese characters and restrained heritage motifs maintained cultural provenance, and concise English copy connected these cues into a coherent interpretive path.

The value of cultural recontextualization was especially apparent in hybrid cases. A package might retain liangcha while adopting a clean, wellness-oriented visual style. Classification then depended on whether the wellness frame merely aestheticized the product or was anchored by culturally and practically useful information. When a label connected herbs, traditional beverage practice, balance, and refreshment, participants could make sense of the product's cultural specificity; when it relied only on a global vocabulary of purity, vitality, or natural energy, that cultural frame weakened. This distinction reinforces the article's treatment of transcreation as coordinated reconfiguration rather than a single verbal adjustment. A retained term, English descriptor, and visual cue acquire meaning through their relationship to one another.

4.4 Symbolic substitution: approachability, market appeal, and cultural detachment

Symbolic substitution moved further toward target-market familiarity. Labels using expressions such as herbal wellness drink, vitality brew, or spring green cake were described by some participants as easier to categorize at first glance because their categories were recognizable. Wellness suggested health-oriented consumption, vitality implied energy or refreshment, and spring green cake indicated seasonality and sweetness. When combined with polished visual design, such expressions appeared attractive and less intimidating to some participants than an unexplained Chinese term.

That advantage was also the source of the configuration's weakness. Substitution could make a label more readable while leaving the product itself vague. A Singapore-based participant's response to wellness drink illustrates the problem: “Wellness drink is so vague. I don't know if it's sweet or bitter, if it's for daily drinking or special occasions. It feels like they're selling a vibe instead of a product.” This was not a rejection of accessibility, but a demand for substance. A familiar phrase may attract attention, yet if it does not clarify taste, use, ingredients, or cultural grounding, it offers little beyond affective atmosphere. The label becomes easy to approach but difficult to interpret.

Qingtuan demonstrates how cultural thinning can occur even when a substitute name is not inaccurate. Spring green cake may give unfamiliar readers an immediate sense of color, season, and food category and may fit a bakery or dessert display more readily than the source term. Yet if the label stops there, Qingming-related memory, regional foodways, and the product's temporal specificity recede. A similar risk arose when liangcha's associations with cooling and herbal balance were absorbed into generalized wellness language. The beverage remained marketable, perhaps even stylish, but the cultural logic distinguishing it from other herbal drinks became less visible.

Symbolic substitution should therefore be understood as ambivalent rather than categorically inferior. Where shelf space is limited or a product is introduced to highly unfamiliar readers, an accessible descriptor may offer a lower-friction point of entry. The problem emerges when substitution becomes replacement without re-anchoring. A substituted name can still participate in transcreation when accompanied by a secondary source term, concise cultural note, ingredient explanation, or visual cue that preserves a relationship to the original food practice. Without such support, substitution risks reducing heritage to a design mood: the product becomes easier to approach but communicates less of the cultural specificity that made transcreation necessary (Figure 2).

The relative positions are qualitative and heuristic rather than numerical measurements or a validated scale. “Cultural grounding” refers to participants’ judgments that a label remained connected to recognizable cultural practices, histories, or uses. “Communicative accessibility” refers to the support a label provided for identifying the product, imagining its sensory qualities, and understanding how it might be consumed.

4.5 Prior familiarity as an interpretive resource

Prior familiarity was treated as an interpretive resource rather than a control variable. The comparison did not support a simple ordered gradient from regular to occasional to limited familiarity; rather, familiarity changed the interpretive resources participants could draw upon. Participants reporting regular familiarity with Chinese or broader Asian foods could sometimes recognize retained source terms or infer likely serving contexts from relatively sparse cues. Occasional-familiarity accounts did not form a stable intermediate pattern: the available accounts varied according to which product, term, or consumption cue was already partly known, reinforcing the decision to treat familiarity as a sensitizing descriptor rather than an ordinal predictor. The three limited-familiarity participants were too few to support a stable subgroup pattern; their accounts were used only as case-level boundary evidence, particularly where a source term, Chinese script, or generalized cultural imagery remained insufficient for product identification, sensory expectation, or imagined use unless concrete category, sensory, or serving information was also available. The minimally explained furu example illustrates this boundary: a UK-based participant described furu as “new to me” and explained that, without description or imagery, the product and its use were difficult to imagine. Across the four dimensions specified in RQ2, the comparison is therefore qualitative and asymmetric rather than ordinal. Product comprehension depended on whether participants could identify the product and its use; sensory expectation became more workable when taste, texture, ingredient, or serving information was available; affective responses could combine curiosity with hesitation when cultural visibility was not accompanied by practical explanation; and perceived authenticity depended on whether cultural cues were interpreted as meaningful and specific rather than merely decorative. The three familiarity categories (regular n = 6, occasional n = 6, limited n = 3) are used as sensitizing comparative descriptors, not statistically comparable groups. In particular, the limited-familiarity subgroup is not used as a basis for stable subgroup or population-level generalization.

4.6 From encoded affordance to participant uptake

Cross-case integration distinguished what a completed label made available from what participants actually noticed and mobilized. The distinction is visible in three contrasting accounts already reported in the Results. In the minimally explained furu example, retention of the source term afforded cultural specificity, but the UK-based participant explicitly reported that the absence of description or imagery prevented a workable understanding of what the product was and how it might be used. Here, the cultural marker was noticed but did not become a sufficient practical interpretive resource. In a culturally recontextualized example, a US-based participant described the label as “not just translating the name, but telling a little story about how it fits into life.” In this account, explanatory framing was mobilized to connect an unfamiliar product with an imaginable consumption context. By contrast, the expression “wellness drink” offered a recognizable market category, yet a Singapore-based participant questioned it as too vague to establish taste, occasion, or product identity, describing the presentation as “selling a vibe instead of a product.” The cue therefore afforded initial approachability without necessarily providing informational or cultural anchoring. These cases show uptake, insufficient uptake, and questioning rather than only confirming examples. Accordingly, the analysis treats communicative affordance and actual reception as analytically distinct: a verbal or visual resource enters the reception-side argument only when participant accounts indicate how it was noticed, mobilized, ignored, questioned, or reinterpreted. These contrasts are case-level illustrations of uptake, insufficient uptake, and questioning; they are not response counts and are not used to estimate the prevalence of any reception pattern.

5 Discussion

5.1 Perceived authenticity as a negotiated judgment

The reception data complicate any simple equation between source-culture visibility and authenticity. Participants did not treat Chinese names, characters, calligraphy, or traditional motifs as automatic evidence that a label was authentic. These cues often mattered, but their effects depended on how they interacted with explanation and use. A prominent Chinese name could make a label appear culturally grounded while leaving it unhelpful; a modern package could remain accessible without seeming culturally shallow when its copy provided precise information about origin, ingredients, or eating practices. Perceived authenticity was therefore articulated and negotiated in relation to combinations of cues rather than located in any single element.

Prior familiarity shaped those relationships. Participants who regularly encountered Chinese or broader Asian foods in the present accounts could more readily recognize a source term, require less explanation, or infer a serving context from a limited cue. Those with less familiarity could find the same cue attractive but inaccessible. Occasional-familiarity accounts did not occupy a uniform intermediate position, which is consistent with treating familiarity as a situated interpretive resource rather than an ordered predictor. This difference did not mean that unfamiliar participants wanted the food fully domesticated. Some responded positively when labels retained a Chinese marker and provided a clear interpretive bridge; what they resisted was being left without enough information to understand the product. Accessibility, their responses suggest, is not the opposite of authenticity. Concrete, culturally respectful explanation can make a source-culture term appear more credible rather than less.

The interviews also showed that authenticity was not a single value. Some participants associated it with the retention of Chinese terms and characters, whereas others emphasized specificity. A label seemed more credible when it explained how furu is used with congee or hotpot, or when it linked qingtuan to spring and Qingming instead of presenting it simply as a green dessert. Several participants responded negatively to labels that used cultural signs decoratively without helping them understand the food. Their concern was not that packaging should become academically detailed, but that cultural difference should not be reduced to atmosphere. A brief, well-placed explanation could therefore appear more authentic than a dense arrangement of motifs.

This finding has direct theoretical implications for how transcreation is used in the present study. Because the research examines completed labels and audience responses rather than translators’ or designers’ production processes, transcreation is treated here as a reception-oriented analytical framework for multimodal cultural mediation. The analysis can identify coordinated verbal-visual reconfiguration in the finished artifact and examine whether participants notice, use, question, or reinterpret those resources; it cannot establish the intentions or decision-making processes through which the labels were produced. The theoretical contribution therefore lies in specifying conditions under which completed label configurations become usable—or fail to become usable—as interpretive resources for particular audiences.

5.2 From configuration to practice: implications for packaging and informational advertising

The findings suggest bounded practical implications for translators, brand teams, packaging designers, and cultural mediators rather than experimentally validated design rules. In the reported accounts, labels described as understandable and credible tended to retain a culturally meaningful term or cue while also providing concise interpretive support, with visual design contributing to rather than substituting for product explanation. This pattern is relevant to the informational functions of packaging advertising because unfamiliar heritage foods can raise uncertainty about product identity, sensory qualities, use, and cultural context. The present qualitative evidence therefore supports treating concise explanatory, sensory, and serving information as candidate resources for interpretive access, while recognizing that their effects require further testing in larger or experimental studies.

Table 7 is retained only as an explicitly author-generated application of the qualitative findings, not as additional empirical evidence. The proposed wording was not observed in the corpus and was not tested with participants. Its purpose is to illustrate how the analytical distinction between cultural visibility and interpretive support might inform future label development. The examples are not fixed templates and should not be attributed to any sampled brand; any commercial use would also require regulatory and audience testing.

Table 7. Author-generated illustrative label revisions and packaging-design implications.

The wording in the third column is generated by the author as an application of the findings. It is not observed corpus wording and should not be attributed to any brand without a corresponding sample identifier and exact source.

The practical implication is not that every label should become longer. Rather, the participant accounts indicate the value of selective scaffolding when particular resources were actually mobilized in interpretation: a retained source term can signal cultural specificity; a descriptor can place the product within a recognizable category; sensory or use information can help participants imagine consumption; and a concise cultural note can contextualize why the product is more than an ingredient bundle. These possibilities should be read as evidence-bounded design implications, not as experimentally validated prescriptions. Their usefulness remains contingent on whether recipients notice and use the relevant cues.

5.3 Mapping the findings to the research questions

The integrated evidence provides direct answers to the three research questions. In response to RQ1, the corpus revealed three recurring verbal-visual configurations, each organizing a different relationship among retention, explanation, and substitution. RQ2 concerned how participants interpreted these configurations in terms of comprehension, sensory expectation, affective response, and perceived authenticity. Participant accounts recurrently expressed comprehension and trust when labels supplied practical and sensory context, whereas authenticity judgments depended on whether cultural cues appeared meaningful rather than decorative. RQ3 asked what the relationship between configurations and responses contributes to a reception-oriented account of transcreation. The comparison indicates that the present findings support treating transcreation as a reception-oriented analytical account of interpretive access rather than as creative rewriting or market adaptation alone (Table 8).

Table 8. Findings mapped to the research questions.

This mapping also clarifies the study's contribution. Cultural recontextualization is not claimed to be universally superior across markets, products, or audiences. In a diaspora grocery setting, semantic preservation may be efficient because readers already know the term; in a mainstream supermarket or global e-commerce interface, the same configuration may require additional support. Symbolic substitution may help a product enter an unfamiliar category, but it becomes more robust when it remains tethered to source-culture meaning. The contribution lies in identifying conditions under which label resources become usable interpretive pathways: cultural markers require explanation when audiences lack background knowledge; explanation was particularly useful in the present accounts when it was concrete and practical; visual cues support comprehension when they clarify ingredients, use, or occasion; and participants in several accounts attributed authenticity when they perceived a credible relationship between the product's cultural identity and its presentation.

Taken together, the findings position heritage-food labels as small but consequential sites of cross-cultural communication. They make some meanings more available while backgrounding or replacing others, and participants may take up, question, ignore, or reinterpret those resources. In this study, transcreation is therefore best treated not as an observed production practice but as a reception-oriented analytical account of coordinated multimodal mediation in completed labels. The central issue is how foods such as liangcha, furu, and qingtuan are made legible without being flattened into generic wellness, condiment, or dessert categories, and how that offered legibility is actually negotiated by readers.

6 Conclusion

This article has examined English-facing labels for liangcha, furu, and qingtuan as compact yet consequential sites of cross-cultural communication. Rather than seeking a single correct English equivalent for each heritage food, it has considered how package labels assemble linguistic, visual, sensory, practical, and cultural resources so that unfamiliar foods can become legible without being emptied of their situated meanings. Across all three product categories, food-label translation emerged as a multimodal act of mediation rather than a narrow transfer of product names. Labels identify products, but they also direct attention, organize expectation, frame cultural provenance, and invite prospective consumers to imagine how a food might taste, be used, and matter.

Three recurrent configurations were identified: semantic preservation, cultural recontextualization, and symbolic substitution. Semantic preservation kept source-culture terms, Chinese characters, or close literal renderings visible, thereby protecting linguistic specificity and often signaling cultural grounding; at the same time, it placed a substantial interpretive burden on readers unfamiliar with Chinese foodways. Symbolic substitution moved in the opposite direction by replacing or backgrounding culturally specific terms through familiar categories, poetic names, wellness language, naturalness, or lifestyle-oriented copy. This approach could lower the threshold of initial recognition or visual appeal, but it sometimes weakened connections to the practices, occasions, and histories through which the product becomes meaningful. Within the materials examined, participant accounts recurrently linked cultural recontextualization with clearer and more confident interpretations. By retaining recognizable source-culture elements while adding concise explanations, sensory descriptors, serving cues, or contextual heritage framing, it made cultural difference interpretable rather than either opaque or flattened.

This pattern should be understood as a situated finding rather than a universal hierarchy. The evidence does not show that semantic preservation is invariably inaccessible or that symbolic substitution is necessarily reductive. A retained term may work effectively for readers who already recognize the product or shop in settings where Chinese culinary categories are familiar; a market-oriented label may also be useful when highly unfamiliar readers need a low-friction point of entry. What mattered was the quality of the interpretive pathway created by the complete label configuration. Participants responded more confidently when a label connected name, ingredients, taste, use, and cultural framing, and expressed greater hesitation when attractive wording or culturally marked design failed to answer basic questions about what the product was, how it might be consumed, or why its cultural associations were invoked.

These findings refine the article's reception-oriented account of transcreation. In this study, transcreation is not treated as an empirically observed production process or as evidence of translators’ or designers’ intentions. Rather, it functions as an analytical framework for examining coordinated verbal-visual reconfiguration in completed heritage-food labels and the ways participants take up, question, ignore, or rework those resources. Reception data are essential because communicative effects cannot be inferred from design features alone. Chinese characters, traditional motifs, minimalist aesthetics, and wellness language carry no fixed communicative value; their relevance depends on how participants mobilize them through prior familiarity, sensory expectations, perceived risk, and broader assumptions about ethnic and heritage foods.

This point is especially important for perceived authenticity, which has been treated as a participant-attributed, context-dependent judgment rather than an inherent quality guaranteed by source-language names or heritage imagery. Some participants regarded retained Chinese terms as credible signs of cultural grounding, whereas others found the same terms uninformative without explanation. Modernized labels could appear approachable, generic, or detached depending on the support they provided. Authenticity and accessibility therefore do not form a simple opposition. Cultural specificity can become more accessible through explanation, while familiar wording may remain weak if it obscures product identity, taste, or use. Labels participants described as understandable and credible did not erase unfamiliarity; they placed it within a usable context.

The practical implications are modest but clear. Brands, translators, packaging designers, and cultural mediators should avoid both leaving culture-specific terms unsupported and replacing them with globalized expressions that make the product easy to approach but difficult to situate. A more responsible design can retain key Chinese terms while providing a short English descriptor, concrete sensory cue, ordinary use context, and visual information that helps readers understand the food as food rather than only as a cultural symbol. For liangcha, this may involve explaining herbal cooling as a culturally situated beverage practice while avoiding unsupported health claims. For furu, serving cues such as congee, rice, or hotpot can reduce uncertainty about texture, intensity, and culinary role. For qingtuan, a concise reference to spring, Qingming, fillings, or regional memory can prevent the product from collapsing into a generic green dessert. These are not fixed formulas, but examples of how transcreation can design access to cultural meaning within the spatial and commercial constraints of packaging.

The study has several limitations. Its purposive corpus was restricted to 36 English-facing samples across three Chinese heritage-food categories and combined physical packaging with online consumer-facing materials. These formats differ in spatial constraints, information capacity, and reading sequence, and the research was not designed to test systematic differences between them. Interview data came from 15 English-speaking adults in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore, offering qualitative insight into interpretive processes rather than market-wide estimates of preference or effectiveness. Responses were shaped by the stimuli shown, participants’ prior exposure to Chinese or broader Asian foods, possible presentation-order and stimulus-set influences, and the online interview setting. One researcher conducted the coding and interpretation; delayed recoding supports consistency but does not establish intercoder reliability. The findings therefore do not represent all Chinese export packaging, all English-speaking consumers, or all forms of culinary heritage communication. Their value lies in identifying analytically transferable patterns in how label resources support or obstruct interpretation, how authenticity is negotiated through reception, and how transcreation operates when linguistic mediation is inseparable from visual and sensory framing.

Future research could extend this account in several directions. A larger and more diverse corpus would permit more systematic comparison across product categories, brand types, and retail settings. Comparative studies of national markets, diaspora communities, and mainstream retail environments could clarify how familiarity alters the balance between cultural retention and explanatory support. Experimental or survey-based designs might test whether particular combinations of source terms, descriptors, and images affect comprehension, perceived authenticity, willingness to try, or trust. Digital packaging and e-commerce interfaces also merit closer attention because images, reviews, QR codes, and extended product narratives can supplement the limited space of a physical label. Such work would help establish when transcreation remains a matter of compact packaging design and when it becomes part of a broader communicative ecology.

Within its bounded scope, the article shows that heritage-food labels perform cultural work that is easily underestimated because it occurs on small surfaces and in everyday consumer settings. Labels mediate between naming and tasting, memory and marketability, and cultural specificity and cross-cultural readability. The challenge is neither to make Chinese heritage foods simply familiar nor to preserve them as inaccessible signs of difference, but to create conditions in which unfamiliar consumers can approach them with sufficient information, curiosity, and respect to recognize the practices and meanings they carry beyond the package. Understood in this restrained and reception-oriented sense, transcreation offers a precise way to describe that work.

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Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2026.1913686/full#supplementary-material

Category-level overview of the packaging corpus and retained traceability fields Supplementary material at the source

Footnotes

Edited by: Jiayi Wang, De Montfort University, United Kingdom

Reviewed by: Z. Hidayat, Universitas Ciputra, Indonesia

Esti Junining, Brawijaya University Hospital, Indonesia