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

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

>On 5/15/14 6:17 AM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
>> ...
>> On p. 134 he quotes Burton:
>> "Wail for the little partridges on porringer and plate; 
>> cry for the ruin of fries and stew well marinate."

David Friedman wrote:
> The examples you are giving involve an additional issue, aside from 
> ignorance of the cuisine. Burton is doing verse translation, which means 
> he has to find words that fit the rhyme and meter he is using. So he 
> isn't simply guessing, he's picking food descriptions that work for the 
> poem, not necessarily the ones he would be using as best guesses in a 
> prose translation.

I did notice that and I know translating rhyming poetry is even trickier than prose. That's why i said that "bread" and "cake" scan the same -- and neither was at the end of a line, so they weren't part of a rhyming couplet. I suspect the "crane" may not have sounded as delicious as "partridges", because there was probably some way to make that fit. Plus, if someone was thinking Burton was accurate, it's another example of where he fiddled with the food.

However, in the tales Burton didn't try to rhyme, and some of the examples of misunderstood food came from there as well.

Urtatim