The ever-changing global trends have led to the improvement and proliferation of many aspects, including foods. Immigrants always bring food traditions from their native countries, which then are assimilated into the local cuisine of their new homes.
A cookbook writer and anthropologist Claudia Roden put an instance for this using the British “fish n’ chips” that was firstly introduced in Britain during the 16th century by Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal. Tacos, paella, and tiramisu are also several foods that were globalized through assimilation.
Culinary Translation Challenges and Strategies
People’s interest in food and cooking hasn’t stopped growing over the years, thanks to food-related contents in cookbooks, cooking and nutrition publications, TV programs, and foodie blogs.
During the past few years, especially in the current pandemic world, an increasing trend in cooking and gastronomy has occurred, as the situation forces people to stay at home, making them have more time to cook their own meals.
With the happening trend, cookbooks are published and translated at a rate never seen before, making culinary translation a niche specialization, which is deemed to have a promising prospect for linguists who also happen to be cooks and food lovers.
A greater variety of food and ingredients have encouraged the need for documents and labels that accompany foods and the need to translate them. This phenomenon has led to the high demands of food-related materials in need of translation.
Translation intertwines the words with the support of grammar. Meanwhile, the challenge appears in the food context since foreign dishes consist of some unusual ingredients, which are combined in such a way to make the dish acceptable in a diverse culinary culture. Cooks and translators must possess certain strategies to make the dish and food script appealing for the readers or diners by examining the recipes or texts.
Importance of Cultural Awareness in Culinary Translation
Translation, which is specialized in the culinary sector is not limited to translating cookbooks and recipes but also any other materials related to the food and beverage industry. If the food labels, menus, or cookbooks are translated by a machine or an amateur translator, some hilarious consequences might arise as blunders that devastate a certain brand’s image and taint a person’s reputation.
It is the reason for culinary translators to dedicate extra care to any linguistic components to avoid incorrect information on food labels or else fatal consequences will follow the people with special diets or food allergies.
A culinary translator Olivia Singier Texier presented “What Is Cooking – An Introduction to Culinary Translation” webinar in 2020. She recognized several challenges in translating a cookbook. To do the translation, a translator might have to do some research about the intended audience of the book to guide the translation choices.
Regarding the translation of recipes themselves, Olivia focused on five specific challenges, including translating the names of the recipes, dealing with imperial measures, dealing with brands that do not exist in the target country, dealing with ingredients that are unavailable in the target country, and making translation smoothly invisible.
Several solutions have been generated to deal with some challenges in the culinary translation, such as the lack of ingredients in the target country and the measurement. For the lack of ingredients, original ingredients should be compared with a list of possible substitutes.
As for recipes, a translator must stick closely to the original procedure, yet in case certain ideas for substitutions are offered, the translator must explain why. It is also recommendable for the translator or another person connected to the project to cook recipes both in their original forms and in the new versions with substitutions in order to make sure that the tastes, appearances, smells, and other salient features are preserved.
Tips for Culinary Translators
As for measurement, two major possible strategies are offered. First, the publisher of the translated cookbook can simply retain the measurements and then offer a conversion table at the back of the book.
Through this scenario, the new measurements of the target culture’s system must be utilized. This strategy requires complete replacement. It means that the translator or another expert should test all the recipes and shifts of the measurements, in which the translator must be careful to ensure that all the new measurements make sense in the context of the converted recipes.
Nevertheless, replacement and retention as a combination strategy might confuse the readers, so it is rarely found in cookbooks.
Translation for the culinary industry demands some extensive knowledge about the source and the target language, especially for the culture-specific items, such as utensils (cutlery and crockery), appliances, ingredients, measurements, and cooking techniques or processes.
Precision is the key when translating the culinary world. Therefore, finding or making a proper culinary glossary can be a prerequisite in accepting projects in this field in addition to access to trustworthy references, dictionaries, and encyclopedias.
Following are four common strategies in dealing with food-related items:
#1 Retention
This strategy is similar to borrowing, as the source language and target language adopt in rendering a food-related culture-specific item. For instance, the translation of the British national food “Bubble and Squeak”, which is maintained in the translation into the Indonesian language. “Bubble and Squeak” itself is made of mashed potatoes mixed with chopped cooked cabbage.
The maintenance is mainly due to the unavailability of a perfect substitute for the term. Even though Indonesia has a similar food to the “Bubble and Squeak” called perkedel, both are different. While “Bubble and Squeak” contains cabbage, perkedel does not.
Another retention strategy is also utilized for the translation of Indian food “curry” into kari. This strategy indicates an adjustment of pronunciation. In its original source, “curry” is a soupy dish using special seasonings, consisting of candlenut, galangal, turmeric, dry spices such as cumin, fennel, coriander, and lemongrass.
Even though Indonesian kari does not perfectly include the same ingredients, the translation is still acceptable since “curry” and kari are mainly made of vegetables, meat, and spices.
#2 Direct Translation
A direct translation is implemented only when certain terms in the source language have the equivalent terms in the target language. For instance:
Source:
“A herb roasted turkey breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, honey poached cranberries, and a cornbread stuffing hoecake.”
Target:
“Dada kalkun rempah panggang, kentang tumbuk dan kuah, kranberi rendam madu, kue cangkul isi roti jagung.”
There is a special thing from the aforementioned example. The term “hoecake” is directly translated into kue cangkul. Even though the translation is correct, it might still be confusing for Indonesian readers since they are not familiar with the name of the cake. “
Hoecake” is an American pancake made from cornmeal that is baked on a hoe. Indonesia also has a signature pancake called serabi. Yet, serabi is made from rice flour and traditionally cooked on a stove using molds made of baked clay. Therefore, serabi is not the best choice to replace “hoecake”.
Such a condition is recognized as a calque. It indicates a direct translation strategy word by word. As a consequence, calque may require additional definitions to accompany the term in the target language.
#3 Generalization
“Hash browns”, which is translated into kentang goreng kecil can be a perfect example of this type of culinary translation strategy. “Hash browns” is made of boiled potatoes that have been diced, mixed with chopped onions, and fried.
The absence of an equivalent product in the Indonesian language to define a similar food like “hash browns” may lead the translators to choose more general items in their translation products. Instead of maintaining the name of the food, translators can also put a simple direct definition that can be conveniently perceived by people in common.
#4 Substitution
This is applicable when the target readers have been familiar with a certain cultural-specific item in the source text. The term “jaggery” can provide a good example for explanation. “Jaggery” is a type of solid dark sugar made from sugarcane or sap.
Indonesian people have a specific term for this, which is gula merah or gula jawa, which is made from sugarcane or coconut. The translation choice is considered as an apple-to-apple comparison since both terms indicate brown sugar.
One of the critical aspects of culinary translation is knowing the intended audience. Translating food-related documents is about translating a different culture.
The awareness of culture-specific elements and the implementation of specific strategies to deal with the cultural terms are definite bases to produce equivalent translation products. In doing culinary translation, translators can adopt the following tips:
- Know your terminology: translators should adopt quality reference books, consult parallel texts in the source language and target language, and also create glossaries to avoid a time-consuming review.
- Know your ingredients: translators should understand the ingredients by initiating some additional research about the differences in scaling and labeling.
- Know your measures: translators should provide a conversion for recipe measurements and their correspondence in the metric system.
- Know your target culture: as title can be a clickbait, translators are required to use informative and appealing terms, as the reflection of their knowledge in the source culture and target culture.
- Make your translation invisible: the translation products should be conveniently readable in the target culture, as smooth as it is in the source culture. This strategy will provide a user-friendly culinary translation.
Passion for Food and Cooking in Translation
A passion for food and cooking is essential. People will always need to educate themselves on certain subjects by any means possible. Translating recipes involve a lot of research, so a number of preliminary works are required.
Translators should start making glossaries and regularly grasp what they learn from reading, classes, and translation works. It is essential to list a translating specialization on the résumé and market this service to particular agencies that serve the food industry.
To make oneself known, a translator can start blogging to archive their knowledge about the food industry or publishing their recipes.
It is common to admit challenges when translating cultural-specific items like signature foods. As a player in the translation sector, Linguwiz is aware of this condition.
Our presence in the ecosystem aims to assist business and related sectors, including the culinary industry to efficiently grow amid the disruptive era and comfortably market their products to the consumers. We uphold our commitment to providing the best resources in our translation and localization services with credible and certified experts.
For further details of our range of translation services and specifications, please go to contact us.
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