Food Translation

As it was stated in the first point in this chapter, words and expressions connected with food belong to the ‘material culture’ category of culture-specific items offered by Peter Newmark (1988, p. 103). As it was also stated before, it is not easy for translators to render such items because they carry cultural factors which vary between languages and are usually not recognized by the target audience. Although some food names like for instance pizza or cupcakes are widely known and used all over the world in their original forms, others, especially local ones, should be translated. This is because they are whole mysteries for the foreigners who visit overseas restaurants. The problem is how food names and expressions should be rendered to

The first one relies on leaving the food name as it is in the original language and marking it with italics. It is done to show the foreigners that the word or expression is borrowed from foreign language. Although this method allows the translator to maintain the original essence of the word, unfortunately it does not help the readers understand what will be served to them because they do not know what is behind that name. The second strategy is also about leaving the food name in its original form but this time brief description explaining it should be included either next to the original name or in a footnote created for this purpose. Even though thanks to this strategy the target audience might have no problems in making out the actual meaning of a served dish, it is not always appropriate to apply because of the affection of the overall flow of the translation. Finally, the last strategy or option used in dealing with the translation of food names relies on finding the closest equivalent of the original word in the target language. It requires comparing the actual dish with the most similar one served in the country of the target readers. Then the equivalent should be written down either in quotation marks or left alone as a

According to Peter Newmark there are five categories of these items. Translating them is a very challenging task for translators because of the existence of intercultural gap between the speakers of the source and target language. Culture and language are inseparable and thus cultural factors transfer from one language to another through translation. The problem of untranslatability occurs when no equivalence can be found in the TL for the SL utterance and it is divided by John Catford into two categories – linguistic and cultural. There are two methods of translation culture-specific items: domestication and foreignization. Peter Newmark distinguished seventeen strategies which can be helpful in translating them and are described in this chapter. Translators dealing with food texts should make thorough research about translated texts as well as be faithful to the original. There are three strategies concerning the translation of such words and expressions explained