CPD focus session: “The art of culinary translation” (CIOL)
As part of my CDP, I’ve just taken part in an interesting focus session on culinary translation given by the ITI.
To all intents and purposes, it may seem a simple task to translate a menu, recipe, and references to food and drink, but (and as learned by experience), this assumption is a fallacy, and culinary translation is actually a highly specialised, culturally sensitive and extremely complex domain.
Just how does one, for example, translate a reference to Wotsits for a non-English-speaking (or non-British even!) audience? And what about a corned beef sandwich, Welsh rarebit or mince pies? The problem is that these simply do not exist in other cultures – neither the ingredients, nor the concepts – and yet, as we can see, many of these references carry strong cultural connotations, representing traditional celebrations, invoking memories of childhood, or as symbols of national identity.
Culinary translation plays an important role here in the Costa Brava – a place full of excellent, renowned restaurants and tourist hotspots in a country that’s renowned not only for its gastronomy in general but also for it’s rich, diverse, regional cuisine*. In my case, this involves delighting in Catalan classics such as pa amb tomàquet and botifarra amb mongetes, drinking garnatxa from a porró and getting messy eating delicious (and endlessly entertaining) spring calçots.
But just how do you say these things when translating them into English? Can pan de cristal be translated literally as “glass bread”, or is it fair to call it a local form of ciabatta? And is samfaina strictly speaking really the same as ratatouille?
These are the conundrums facing every translator in our “square-peg-into-a-round-hole” quest to transfer cultural concepts when cultures are not always directly transferrable. And for this reason, it’s better to have a translator with a foot in the local culture and area, who can (although admittedly not always with immense ease), bridge this non-equivalence while conveying the uniqueness, deliciousness and traditionality of this regional cuisine in a way that is alluring yet comprehensible to the reader.
With over twenty years’ experience living in the area and sampling these culinary delights, I’m well equipped for the job, and so for all your culinary translation needs (menus, product descriptions, websites for local producers), please don’t hesitate to get in touch here.
(* Not to boast, but the area boasts two of the previous “world’s best restaurants” – El Bulli in Roses and Girona’s El Celler de Can Roca. There’s also the unique “volcanic cuisine” of the nearby Garrotxa).