[Sca-cooks] Working from original vs "translation"

[ysabeau]

I enjoy trying to figure out what the cooks who wrote the recipe 
intended. I think the fun in it is comparing what you come up with 
what someone else comes up with. In almost anything you do, there 
is subjectivity and judgment calls. 

I deal with this on a regular basis at work. I've found 
that "description" isn't really a description in the context I 
find it in. It has been bastardized into meaning "name" because of 
a poor Japanese to English translation that was made over 5 years 
ago. Now we are stuck with a database that lists a part's name 
as "Description" and the description is "Item". I can see that 
happening with the recipes and translations over the course of 
hundreds of years. Even between translators sitting next to each 
other translating the same document there is a disparity in the 
results. (The funny thing is the the American translator always 
thinks his translations are better than the Japanese/American's 
translations). 

That is also one of the fun parts of the cheese goo competition 
this weekend. It is a fairly simply recipe that has a standard 
redaction that is fairly well accepted. Now we are being 
challenged to think outside the box and reevaluate it with fresh 
eyes. I'm sure there will be a wide variety of cheese goos at the 
competition and I'm looking forward to seeing how others 
interpreted it. 

I think anyone can follow a recipe...it takes skill and talent to 
take that recipe and read between the lines to make it your own.

Ysabeau


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" 
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Reply-To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:36:03 -0500

>Also sprach Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise:
>>  > Harumph! That "'y-blaunched' crap", as you call it, is as 
much a part
>>>  of the culture, and therefore the mindset and, ultimately,
>>>  methodology as your dearly-bought modern cook's experience,
>>
>>Hm... but what about those of us who are not translators and 
primarily
>>cook from non-English manuscripts? We are reading materials in
>>translation. When I first started out cooking, despite being an 
English
>>major, I found translating the Middle English frustrating. I 
also had to
>>struggle with gothic typefaces in facsimiles
>
>I can barely read them myself, but I'm not sure I'm getting your 
>point. Obviously, anyone who needs a translation needs a 
translation, 
>and either creates one or obtains one from another source. My 
point 
>was only that translating from Middle English, when one is an 
English 
>speaker, is eminently doable even for the non-linguists among us, 
and 
>that an untranslated language is not necessarily "crap". Marcel 
>Proust in French notwithstanding.
>
>I touched on this very briefly some time ago, on the subject of 
>kitchen prep work: sometimes when a task is daunting, you can 
either 
>use up all your energy bemoaning how difficult it's going to be 
to 
>peel and chop that 50-lb bag of onions, or you can shut up and 
just 
>do it, and turn it into a 49 pound bag of onions, then a 48-lb 
bag, 
>etc. Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) you just go ahead and 
do 
>it, using the tools available to you, such as a good glossary (I 
>highly recommend the one in the back of Curye On Inglysh) and the 
>trick I mentioned of reading the text out loud. Hey, it worked in 
>"The Thirteenth Warrior", ay?
>
>And recipes are especially conducive to this type of treatment 
>because they tend to be the equivalent of a short paragraph, 
rather 
>than pages and pages of text which, if you put it down, you'll 
lose 
>your train of thought.
>
>>Now, after years of practice cooking foods in translation, I 
found that
>>I can interpret Middle English a bit better, and I can also read
>>facsimiles with facility, if not with comfort.
>
>Yep. Me, too. I'm fairly comfortable with it, too, but everybody 
>starts off in the same place and moves to that point. Maybe I'm 
>trying to promote the practice of people doing their own 
>transliterations (am I using that word correctly?) by not so much 
>denigrating those who can't or don't, but just by saying the task 
>shouldn't be all that scary.
>
>A.
>-- 
>
>
>
>
>"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de 
la 
>brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let 
them 
>eat cake!"
>	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
>Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782
>
>"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on 
Prozac?"
>	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman 
Terry 
>Holt, 07/29/04
>
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>
 

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