[Sca-cooks] Translation Criteria

[Debra Hense]

Looking over some of the critique's so far.

Please remember, this is generic criteria for translations.  Not just specific to cookbook translations.  While we are all cooks to one degree or another on this list, you need to remember this criteria will also be applied to the fencing manual translations etc.

- Why modern english - because we didn't want people to just run text though a translating program.  To translate it to modern english indicates the person went through a lot of personal hard work.  They had to do some personal interpretation as to the meaning of some of the words and phrases.  A straight word for word translation of a foreign language is nice - and retains the flavor of the original, but is usually not very readable as English does not use very many gender nouns. A reader could get lost figuring out what refers to what.  You can maintain a lot of the flavor of the original by keeping all the ands and thens in the translation.

- Why 3 pages - if you look under scope - It states that the submitter can select any three pages of translation from his work.  I am assuming this is a competition where the judges have not looked at the work prior to sitting down to judge it at an event.  Anything longer and the judge will have to spend significant time on just one entry,  (I'm thinking an hour or more) rather than than the half-hour we currently allot per entry at our larger competition events.  Of course the number of pages could change if the requirement is that the translation must be submitted three weeks in advance, and it is distributed to the judges who then can review it at their leisure before the day of the event.

- Types of manuscripts being translated - hopefully the evaluator will be smart enough to know that what is mentioned are guideline/examples.  Someone doing a translation of a 15th century english cooking manuscript has access to many other translations already done for 15th century english cooking manuscripts.  They can just look at someone else's work and use their translation for a particular word or phrase.  It may not have been translated correctly to begin with, and our submitter just perpetuated the incorrect translation in their own work.  If however, the submitter is the first person to ever translate the manuscript, and there are few if any know translations of closely related material, then they get credit for breaking new ground and adding to the general pool of knowledge.

- Also, the thinking on this was that there are not many translated treatises on thrush (for example) and all its associated nomeclature at there are on cooking.  It becomes harder to translate because there is not a vocabulary already built up.  As more and more thrush treatises are translated then it too becomes like the cooking book example, and should be evaluated as such.

Kateryn