[Sca-cooks] Food of the Arabian Nights was Odd Question

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

"Then Perry points out that where Burton has "little partridges" the  
original has "cranes" - something Burton should have known... and where Burton  
has "stews well marinate" it actually says partridges. "Fries" are fried  
dishes... Perry continues: "In the third line, fish are served on loaves of a  
mysterious bread which Burton renders as 'cakes in piles' " Now, bread is 
not  cake, but it scans the same, so Burton should have just used "bread" - 
why make  up "cake" when it isn't there?"

Actually, specifically what he points out  is that BURTON'S OWN NOTE gives 
the further information: "The 'little  partridges' are actually cranes and 
the 'stews well marinate' are partridges, as  a careful reading of Burton's 
footnote would reveal." I don't know what's the  matter with using 'fries' 
for 'fried dishes'; in Burton's time our sense of the  word did not exist. As 
for using 'cakes' for 'breads', Perry certainly isn't  upset by that -that's 
your added critique. As someone who does a great deal of  bread history, I 
can tell you one finds different authors using the two words  for the same 
thing fairly often. "Fouace", for instance, which is basically  hearth bread, 
has been rendered as "cake" more than once. And is a croissant a  pastry or 
a roll? It is described as either across various texts.
 
Perry certainly doesn't fault Burton here. He only offers his own idea of  
what a "ladder bread" might have been.


"Or, for example, Perry points  out the text said "qata'if", and Burton 
translated that as "fritter" dripping  with honey or syrup and melted butter. 
But it's actually a pancake rolled around  sweetened chopped nuts. Not a 
fritter, yet Burton said it was. He didn't know  what the dish was, so he MADE 
STUFF UP"

But you left out the next line in  Perry's text: "The resulting packet is 
then deep-fried". As shorthand for  nineteenth century Western readers, 
"fritters" in this case is not making  something up; it's finding a rough 
approximation for a deep-fried pastry.


He then refers to "Burton's 'soap-cakes' and quite simply says what  they 
corresponded to in Arabic. He certainly does not fault the  translation.

On the combs (anshat), he is as mystified as Burton and  certainly does not 
fault Burton's attempt at a translation. He knows immediately  what a "mess 
of pomegranate seed" is. In regard to the cumin dish, he points out  that 
translators are "virtually unanimous" about its composition - something  they 
could hardly be if they were each making stuff up. The fact that he has  
more precise information at his fingertips certainly does not negate the 
sincere  effort to find an accurate equivalent.

On the passage beginning  'marinated meats...', he himself cannot identify 
one dish in the original. He  sees right off that Burton meant sikbaj by 
marinated meats, and that the dish he  referred as an omelette was indeed made 
with eggs (what else one would compare  it to in Western cuisine is beyond 
me). In general, he makes no specific  critique here of Burton's translation 
but adds further notes to it (where he  can).
 


Again, claiming that people made things up is very different from  saying 
they chose the wrong word in translation (often a matter of taste) or  simply 
didn't have additional information to put what they knew in context. It  
implies they simply, carelessly stuck any word in there they thought they  
could get away with. Perry leaves no such impression about these translators; 
to  the contrary he shows every sign of taking their efforts with the 
greatest  seriousness.
 
You are, in a word, far harsher about these translations than the person  
you continually cite as your authority.

Basically, the faults you're  finding in these texts are the kind of faults 
one finds in all kinds of culinary  translation, even when it is done with 
the greatest seriousness. In her  translation of a fourteenth century 
dietetic, the very serious Belgian scholar  Geneviève Xhayet translates as "crepe" 
a word that other sources show meant  "omelette" in the period and which in 
fact is most often translated that way in  nineteenth century glossaries. 
But just enough dictionaries do render it as  "crepe", and the dish itself 
includes more flour than is typical for an  omelette, for her translation to 
be defensible. 

http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-fourteenth-century-dietetic-belgian.h
tml
 
She also seems to have been completely unaware that "nectar" was a common  
medieval drink.
 
None of this means she was "making stuff up", just struggling with the  
standard issues of translating across cultures and eras.


Otherwise, for those who want to judge for themselves how seriously Perry  
takes these translations, here, once again, is the link to the text:
 
_http://books.google.com/books?id=H0iEWo-WJ40C&lpg=PA134&ots=_N06FivTwm&dq=%
22charles%20perry%22%20burton%20Arab&pg=PA134#v=onepage&q&f=false_ 
(http://books.google.com/books?id=H0iEWo-WJ40C&lpg=PA134&ots=_N06FivTwm&dq="charles%2
0perry"%20burton%20Arab&pg=PA134#v=onepage&q&f=false) 


Jim Chevallier
www.chezjim.com

Beyond Apicius (2):  recipes from other Roman  sources
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/05/beyond-apicius-2-recipes-from-other.htm
l







In  a message dated 5/14/2014 3:17:22 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
lilinah at earthlink.net writes:

Perry points out that further along in the  poem Burton has "This pulse, 
these potherbs stepped in oil with eysill  combinate" where the Arabic has 
sikbaj, which Burton acknowledges in some  footnote.