SC - OT - Ticks at Lilies (fwd)

[Stefan li Rous]

And it came to pass on 27 Jun 00,, that LrdRas at aol.com wrote:

> Another question......wouldn't it be a bit easier to just say about 2
> liters than to keep the word 'azumbre'? I have redacted several recipes
> from the middle eastern corpus and I always give the measurement for
> 'uqqiya' rather than write 6 uqqiya. Is there a good reason for not
> translating the original measurement word that I am unaware of?

In any translation, one has to walk a line between faithfulness to the 
original and comprehensibility to the reader.  In this case, since 
"azumbre" has no English equivalent, I felt that it would be better to 
keep the original word and provide a footnote.  In a redaction, I would 
certainly use modern American measurements.  (This particular recipe 
was so simple as to require no written redaction.)

When you do your redactions of Middle Eastern recipes, I gather that 
you are working from an English translation, not the Arabic original.  
Apparently, the person who translated that cookbook chose to keep 
Arabic measurement terms like 'uqqiya' rather than using ounces or 
pounds.  I have seen a variety of historic cookbooks that are translated 
from another language follow the same practice: foreign measurement 
terms are retained, and are explained in brackets or a footnote; 
redactions use modern measurement terms.


Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net