Mostovi 2005 It is Ali Cods? - The Art of Translating Culture Specific Food Terms Philippa Maurer - Stroh Is it ali Cods? - The Art of Translating Culture-Specific Food Terms Gre le za polenovke? - Prevajanje kulturno- specifičnih terminov s področja kulinarike "No one can understand the word cheese unless he has also a non- linguistic acquaintance with cheese." (Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970) Abstract The article focuses on the difficulties translators might encounter when renderingmenu cards mto a foreign language. This is especially the čase when it comes to culture-specific food terms. The paper points out major concepts to deal with this problem and provides a čase study as regards a Southern Austrian national dish vvhich is unique ali over the world in its ingredients, its shape and way of serving. Povzetek Članek obravnava težave, s katerimi se lahko srečamo pri prevajanju jedilnih listov v tuji jezik. Te so še posebej pereče, ko naletimo na kulturno-specifične termine s področja kulinarike. Članek opozarja na temeljne pojme pri obravnavi problema in ponuja študijo primera, ki za¬ deva prevajanje južnoavstrijske narodne jedi, edinstvene na svetu po svojih sestavinah, obliki in načinu postrežbe. 1. Introduction Culture, as Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dic- tl°nary defines it, is, inter alia, 'the characteris- dc features of everyday existence' - and what is more everyday life than food? Food is indeed fot many the most sensitive and important ex- Ptession of national culture" (Newmark 1988: 97). 1-1. Translation strategies When translating culture-specific terms, e.g. food terms in restaurant menus, the translator ls soon faced with various problems: There is often no one-to-one correspondence betvveen the source language (SL) and the tar- get language (TL) since, as a matter of fact, dif- ferent cultures have different food. So, how, for example, will the translator render Kletze into English for someone who has never ex- perienced it? One solution would be an in- tralingual translation - in Jakobson's terms (1959/2000: 114) - meaning that the translator clarifies what Kletze means by explaining that it is 'small pieces of dried pear'. For the under- standing of Kletze it is, therefore, sufficient to know that fruit can be dried. When the translator, not necessarily in a writ- ten context, adds with hindsight: "as you do it also with grapes, for example", this technique, 73 Philippa Maurer-Stroh Mostovi XXXIX, št. i, 2005, 73-77 1. e. using co-hyponyms as reference, is called chunking-sideways and is described by Katan (1999:147-57). 2. Menu Translation - a Sample Čase "It is generally agreed that translation is not only a linguistic activity but also a cultural one as well. The cultural element is extremely im- portant in the čase of menu translations be- cause it is often quite impossible to find an ex- act equivalent for items that belong exclusively to the source culture." (Fallada Pouget: 1998). Before you start translating a menu, you have to ask yourself what the optimum ren- dering for your target reader, the guest, might be. Basically, what a menu has to do is satisfy- ing the needs of the guests in presenting what the restaurant has to offer in order to allow the guest to make his or her choice. Luckily, there are quite some concepts of food and dishes shared and understood in- temationally, e.g. pizza, hamburger, paella, etc. Hovvever, there are stili many national dishes that do not have counterparts in other cultures, nor are there any translation equivalents to be found. Take Kdrntner Kdsnudel or, more dialectal, Kdrntner Kasnudl, for example. This is the na¬ tional dish of Carinthia, the southernmost fed- eral state of Austria. The Kdrntner Kdsnudel are unique ali over the world in their taste and shape. How will the translator tackle this? Nevvmark (1988: 96) suggests two opposing methods: transference and componential anal- ysis. Transference means that the original term is directly transferred to the TL in order to give "local colour", as Newmark (ibid.) puts it, and keep the cultural concept intact but, he notes, this method may cause problems of intelligibil- ity to the target reader, in our čase, the guest. He describes componential analysis as ""the most accurate translation procedure, which ex- cludes the culture and highlights the message" (ibid). Equivalent to James's (2002) comments on translation problems with Sidi Brahim, a low- quality Algerian wine that has a special, derog- atory connotation in France, our guest, when opening the menu card and coming across the transferred Kdrntner Kasnudl will definitely not know what this dish is since "by using strict- ly formal equivalence, ali meaning gets lost" (ibid.). Introducing componential analysis as translation concept, the guest may be offered 'a kind of pasta filled with cheese'. Alternatively, Graedler (2000) offers some more possibilities within the cline of transfer¬ ence and componential analysis. One of these options available to the translator is to create a new word, to directly translate the term from the SL into the TL, also called loan translation: Carinthian cheese noodles. Hovvever, in this čase, this option rather failed its purpose since noo- dle, by definition of the Oxford Dictionan/ ofEng- lish, is 'a very thin, long strip of pasta or a sim- ilar flour paste, usually eaten with a sauce or in a soup'. Then again, the Austrian dish does NOT consist of very thin, long strips of pasta and they are NOT eaten in soup. Another option, according to Graedler (ibid.), since no English equivalent exists in this čase, is to just leave the term unaltered, maybe in quotes or italics, and to add a explanatory comment: "Kdrntner Kdsnudel " - ravioli-like pas¬ ta filled zvith cheese. Unfortunately, the story does not end here. Quite the contrary is true since, when a term, as here, is culture-bound, we have to "bear in mind the inevitability of translation loss' (James 2002) - even if the meaning of the term is (or seems to be) explained in the translation. Provided that the guest knovvs vvhat pasta is, or, even better, has an understanding of the concept of ravioli1* , the concept of Kdrntner Kds¬ nudel is stili not properly framed. For example/ cheese, in its prototypical perception, is solid food, vvhereas the cheese used for the Carinthi' an national dish is a soft one. So, another im' portant aspect in translating restaurant menus is "to determine how much missing back- 1 Defined as 'small pasta squares filled vvith me3* or cheese' in Longman Dictionarp of Contemporarp £,!' glish. 74 Mostovi 2005 It is Ali Cods? - The Art of Translating Culture Specific Food Terms ground information should be provided by the translator" (ibid.). Every Carinthian, or Austrian in general, would know that the cheese in Karntner Kdsnu- del is a soft one, although, also for them, cheese is prototypically solid. This might be because the type of cheese used for the Kasnudel is typ- ically not referred to as cheese in German, nei- ther Austrian nor German German - although the Kas- definitely should be rendered as cheese in English. Hovvever, the German language sees the kind of cheese in this dish as belong- ing to a different kind of foodstuffs, as (accord- ing to Duden - Deutsches Universahvbrterbuch) 'aus saurer Milch hergestelltes, vveifies, breiig- es NahrungsmitteT, viz. 'a white thick paste made from sour milk'. Should the translator teli the guest that, in this čase, cheese is not the solid food one would normally expect? Here, the question of accura- cy vs. simplicity arises. The simplest solution is to leave cheese in the explanatory comment, while the best, and more accurate, would be to define this special type of cheese for the target reader with no cultural background. If the translator wants the guest to know which kind of "cheese" is filled into the Kas- nudel, which translation will he or she go for? There is indeed no one-to-one equivalence giv- en between German and English... The best near-synonym for the German Topfen2 is curd cheese in English, yet, will the average guest know what curd cheese is, or, should the trans¬ lator apply chunking-up - in Katan's terms (1999:147-57), i.e. putting the specific term into a more general context: soft cheese? (cf. Schvvarz 2003). How much background information does the guest actually need? Does he or she needs to know that Karntner Kasnudel are addition- a% filled with small pieces of potato and on- ion, not to mention the herbs in there? Well, as, primarily in these days, allergies to special ingredients in food have developed en masse, yes, the ingredients should also be given along with the translation. 2 Here it must be added that the Austrian German Topfen in German or Swiss German is Quark. But does the TL guest also need to know ex- actly vvhich herbs are used - just because the people in Austria simply know about it? Defi- nitely not3 . But, what is more important about background information and translation loss is the way the dish is served. Karntner Kasnudel always come with melt- ed or browned butter and a side salad. So, if the menu is intended for guests in the SL, a simple listing of the term Karntner Kasnudel is enough. The menu for the TL guest, however, has to make sure he or she gets to know this "most natural thing in the world" in culture-specific terms and it is, ultimately, the translator who decides "how much may be left for the reader to simply infer" (James 2002). 2.1. Translated menu entries and how English native speakers perceive them Admittedly, atvery short notice, I sent a ques- tionnaire to native speakers of American Eng¬ lish. Taking five different translations of Carin¬ thian menu cards4,1 asked them to teli vvhich translation(s) of Karntner Kasnudel, i.e. listing in the menu, they vvould go for (yes) and vvhich one(s) they vvould not go along vvith (no). (a) "Karntner Kasnudel" - Pasta Carinthian Style (Pasta stuffed vvith curd cheese, potatoes and assorted herbs, served vvith brovvn butter and salad) (b) Cheese noodles vvith salad (boiled patties vvith cottage cheese) (c) Carinthian mixed boiled patties served vvith salad (d) "Karntner Kasnudel" - large parcel of pasta dough filled vvith cheese 3 The herbs in Kasnudel are mint and chervil. 4 The translations are taken from (a) Hotel Fisch- gasthof Jerolitsch, latest one, vvhich I vvas commissi- oned to do (b) Hotel Fischgasthof Jerolitsch, a pre- vious one (c) Hotel Fischgasthof Jerolitsch; Taylor Sprachservice, Klagenfurt (d) (e) 75 Philippa Maurer-Stroh Mostovi XXXIX, št. i, 2005, 73-77 (e) "Kamtner Kasnudel" - ravioli filled with curd cheese As multiple postings were allowed, I got 14 "yes" for (a), followed by 9 "yes" for (b), 5 "yes" for (e). Regarded as being the worst were (c) and (d) with 7 "no". What do the results teli us? Basically, the sub- jects went for the original term plus an accu- rate explanation (a). Surprisingly, (b) with the (inadvertently wrong) one-to-one translation ranks second - this may be due to the more ac- curate explanation in brackets (although cot- tage cheese - which has nothing to do with the cheese in Kamtner Kasnudel - is mentioned here). The reason why (c) and (d) rank lowest might be that (c) does not hint at the nature of the filling, while (d)'s large parcel probably mis- leads the reader. 3. Food Terms and Loan Translations As pointed out in the above stated observa- tion with the difficulties in appropriately trans- lating Kamtner Kasnudel we see that "indeed, the very fact that one culture lacks the words and expressions for things that exist in oth- er cultures is one of the main motivations for borrowing." (Graedler 2000). These include, world-wide known examples such as pizza, hamburger, paella. Also, the Austrian cuisine is a donor to such "culinary internationalisms". Take the famous Austrian pastry Apfelstrudel, for example. The (cultural) concept of Strudel (whether or not filled with apple) is perceived in the same way in, at least, France, Great Britain, Italy and the US, since the standard monolingual dictionar- ies, Le Petit Robert, The Oxford Dictionary ofEng- lish, DeAgostini - Dizionario della Lingua Italia and Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, ali list strudel as culinary term taken from (Austri¬ an) German via borrowing. Another such example is schnitzel, although only adapted to American and British English. In the British English sense, schnitzel is referred to in The Oxford Dictionary of English as 'a thin slice of veal or other light veal, coated in bread- crumbs and fried'. This exactly corresponds to the famous Austrian Wiener Schnitzel, viz. 'Es- calope Viennese Style'. In British English, thus, schnitzel is a clipped form of a direct loan trans¬ lation of the Austrian Wiener Schnitzel, while the American schnitzel, in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, denotes, as the German Schnitzel, a roast escalope only. 4. Conclusion When translating a restaurant menu, the "clear directive" should be to fulfil the expec- tations of the guest in terms of an appropriate presentation of what the restaurant has to of- fer in order to allovv the guest to make his or her choice. So, "the first priority for translated menus must be (to be) informative, to bridge the of- ten considerable distances betvveen different language(s) and different cultures. A linguis- tically opaque menu may be exotic, but it can only convey this quality as a positive value if and when the reader has understood the gener¬ al nature of the dishes." (Fallada Pouget 1998). Stili, also non-translated menus can make the choice of the guests easy - when interse- miotic translation is used (Jakobson 1959/2000: 114), meaning that verbat signs are interpreted by non-verbal signs, e.g. pictures. Considering ali the thoughts brought up in this paper, the optimum way for presenting Kamtner Kasnudel to English speaking guests would be: References Drago, M. and Boroli, A., eds. 1999.Dizionario della Lingua Italiana. Novara: Istituto Geogra- fico De Agostini. Fallada Pouget, C. 1998. "Are Menu Translati¬ ons Getting Worse? Problems from the Emp>' rical Analysis of Restaurant Menus in English 76 Mostovi 2005 It is Ali Cods? - The Art of Translating Culture Specific Food Terms in the Tarragona Area". Availabe at . Fussy, H. and Steiner, U., eds. 2001. Osterreic- hisches Worterbuch. New [39*] edn. Vienna: obv et hpt VerlagsgmbH & Co. KG. Graedler, A. 2000. "Culture shock! OnWords and Expressions for Culture-Specific Things and Phenomena". 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