=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1607/paradowski
|storemode=property
|title=Using Corpus Insights in Specialized Translation: Slicing and Dicing the Language of Food
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1607/paradowski.pdf
|volume=Vol-1607
|authors=Michal B. Paradowski
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/clif/Paradowski16
}}
==Using Corpus Insights in Specialized Translation: Slicing and Dicing the Language of Food==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1607/paradowski.pdf
Using Corpus Insights in Specialized Translation:
Slicing and Dicing the Language of Food
Michał B. Paradowski
*
Institute of Applied Linguistics,
University of Warsaw
ul. Dobra 55, PL-00-312 Warsaw, Poland
†
Department of Second Language Studies,
Indiana University, Bloomington
m.b.paradowski@uw.edu.pl
Abstract 1 Food and culture
Cookery books are governed by their own laws Food is perhaps the most distinctive expression of an
not only in the choice of vocabulary and fixed ethnic group, a culture, or, in modern times, a nation.
expressions, but also grammar and style. Their —A. Sonnenfeld, Food: A Culinary History
translations should accordingly not only be from Antiquity to the Present (1999: xvi)
linguistically impeccable and technically
accurate, but also read as if written by a Food constitutes an inextricable part of our lives;
professional. more than being a purely biological necessity, it
This paper discusses how the employment of has been claimed to play a central role in many
corpus tools can help choose the most
cultures (Counihan & Van Esterik 1997). Roland
appropriate collocation or turn of phrase and
validate hypotheses concerning crucial but non- Barthes went as far as to assert that “an entire
salient grammatical choices (such as the ‘world’ (social environment) is present in and
presence or absence of articles, or preference signified by food” (1961/1997:23), assigning to
for singular or plural), stylistic, spelling and food a ‘commemorative’ function: when people
punctuation conventions. Several categories of prepare meals according to the customs prevalent
snares lurking for the translator will be outlined in their society, they can experience the tradition
with the help of a self-compiled corpus (1m and past of their country, which had been passed
tokens, <12k types), key characteristics of from generation to generation ensuring the
English-language recipes discussed, and continuity of culinary customs. Thus by connecting
numerous concrete examples vindicating the
contemporary times with the practices of our
brownie points gained through analyses of
recipe websites and cookery software in ways
ancestors, food can be viewed as a tool helping
different from those envisaged by their creators preserve the culture of a society (e.g. just like
in teaching ESP and specialized translation African Americans cultivate their roots and culture
presented from the author’s over decade-long through their cooking traditions; Hughes 1980).
experience. 1 Culture determines not only what, but also how
people eat. In his influential work L’Origine des
manières de table Claude Lévi-Strauss analysed
“how the cooking of a society is a language in
1 A shorter version of this paper was presented at engcorpora
which it unconsciously translates its structure”
2015: English Linguistics and Corpora: Research Issues and
(1968/1997:35) – in his view, similarly to language,
Language Teaching Innovations, Université Paris Est Créteil cooking is a society’s means of self-expression,
Val-de-Marne on April 9, 2015. Some of the examples and and “in any cuisine, nothing is simply cooked, but
discussion had appeared in (Paradowski 2010).
39
must be cooked in one fashion or another” (op. emotional connotations that need to be specified in
cit.:29). 2 the target language if the intended effect is to be
Thus the food of a nation together with its eating conveyed” (1987:344).
habits and norms are all a signature of its culture.
3 Encyclopedic knowledge: fauna and
2 Two key components of LSP flora
Translating specialized and technical texts requires Accurate translation of kitchen-related terms
two kinds of knowledge. Firstly, familiarity with obviously requires in-depth familiarity with the
the minilect – restricted form of practically- ingredients and condiments used. Two-word names
oriented technolects used by a limited circle of are generally deceitful in that the frequent
specialists and/or linked to a limited field temptation is to go about them word-for-word.
(Nordman 1996:556), encompassing jargon, This will not, however, take one a long way – take
strictly formalized syntax, discourse conventions, ‘sea urchin’, ‘red snapper’, ‘John Dory’, or ‘navel
and special mode of expression. Recipes are one of oranges’ as examples. Here, one prudent and
few genres with the typography, layout, and typically failsafe tactic is to look up the relevant
superordinate macrostructure so conventionalized, animal species or vegetable in a specialized
interculturally stereotyped and easily recognizable dictionary, or—given the necessary caution—in
that the text type can be identified even by a total the target language version of the Wikipedia. This
linguistic dilettante (op. cit.:558). As such, they may sensitize the translator to many intricacies
fall under Nord’s umbrella of instrumental even when the original term appears fairly
translation, produced when the target text is unproblematic: the head nouns in ‘melon
supposed to “achieve the same range of functions miodowy’, ‘pomidorki koktajlowe’, ‘czekolada
as an original text” (1997:50), as opposed to deserowa’, ‘tłuste mleko’ or ‘jogurt naturalny’ will
documentary translation, where the target text not take as their modifiers the words ‘honey’,
receiver is well aware that they are dealing with a ‘cocktail’, ‘dessert’, ‘fat’ or ‘natural’, but
translation. ‘honeydew [melon]’, ‘cherry [tomatoes]’, ‘dark
The second type of requisite knowledge is what [chocolate]’, ‘whole [milk]’ and ‘plain [yoghurt]’.
can be called ‘encyclopedic’ knowledge and Going in the opposite direction, ‘brown sugar’
experience, especially in the domain of culture- does not so much specify the color of the
bound items (phenomena that are characteristic of sweetener (which can be obtained in the unrefined
only one culture, or better known in the culture beet sugar variety), but the raw material – sugar
from which they stem; Hejwowski 2004:128); in cane; similarly, ‘brown stock’ refers to demi-glace-
the case in point embracing foodstuffs specific for type beef-based stock, while ‘white stock’ to broth
particular cuisines, names of dishes traditional to a cooked on chicken bones and white mirepoix.
country, and terms describing cooking utensils, Yet, dictionaries and even the Wikipedia will
appliances, cutlery and crockery unknown in the not account for all the cases out there – and even
target culture, among others. Quoting David where they do, they rarely provide information on
Crystal, “[t]ranslators [must] have a thorough the actual usage of the terms in gastronomic
understanding of the field of knowledge covered discourse.
by the source text, and of any social, cultural, or
4 Encyclopedic knowledge: moving
2 Another part of culture is the norms pertaining to the beyond the word
sequence and constituent parts of meals (Douglas 1975); the
type of meal and the food served may be reflections of the In the previous section we highlighted the need to
social links between the diners. The culinary codes operating
in a society can also determine the relative significance of the
pay close attention when translating complements
different functions of food; for instance, in Japan its and adjuncts. However, head nouns are no less
appearance is no less important than the taste (Allison 1991), deceptive, with the result that while in some cases
much in line with Goethe’s famous saying that “the meal a verbatim word-for-word translation (aka literal or
should please the eye first and then the stomach.” [“Das Essen
syntagmatic; Vinay & Darbelnet 1958; Hejwowski
soll zuerst das Auge erfreuen und dann den Magen.”] These
cultural influences also blend with food doctrines practised by 2004:95, respectively) may be comprehended, in
religious groups.
40
others it can only be met with blank stares. As Many are relatively obvious and pose little threat:
Pawley and Syder wrote in their seminal paper, BrE ‘beetroot’ is AmE ‘beet’, ‘cutlet’ is ‘chop’,
native speakers of English do not exercise the
‘aubergine’ and ‘eggplant’, ‘courgette’ and
creative potential of syntactic rules to anything ‘zucchini’, ‘swede’ and ‘yellow turnip’, ‘jacket
like their full extent [...], if they did so they would potato’ and ‘baked potato’, ‘sponge fingers’ and
not be accepted as exhibiting nativelike control of ‘ladyfingers’, or ‘liver sausage’ and ‘liverwurst’
the language. The fact is that only a small are easily understood in both countries, as are
proportion of the total set of grammatical ‘greaseproof paper’ and ‘wax paper’. 4
sentences are nativelike in form – in the sense of Somewhat less evidently, English ‘broad beans’
being readily acceptable to native informants as equal American ‘fava beans’, BrE ‘brown bread’ is
ordinary, natural forms of expression. (1983:193) AmE ‘wholemeal bread’, ‘porridge’ is ‘cooked
Thus for instance, while ‘cornflour’ will be oatmeal’, ‘candyfloss’ is ‘cotton candy’. There
correctly understood both in the UK and US to exist more ticklish complications and
mean ‘cornstarch’ (note the spelling as one word), terminological conundrums. A BrE ‘biscuit’ will
‘potato flour’ (‘mąka ziemniaczana’ or ‘potato be an AmE ‘cookie’ (if sweet) or ‘cracker’ (if
starch’) repeatedly puzzles. Condiments are a savory). While ‘fairy cakes’ and ‘cupcakes’ are
kingdom of idiosyncrasy: the English equivalent of similar (although the finishing touches differ),
‘przyprawa do piernika’ focuses on the fact that it ‘English muffins’ are nonexistent in England,
contains more than one ingredient – ‘gingerbread where their closest cultural equivalent is a
mix’ or ‘mixed spice’, but ‘przyprawa pięć ‘crumpet’. BrE ‘chicory’ is AmE ‘endive’ while
smaków’, ‘curry’ and ‘chili’ concentrate more on ‘endive’ is ‘chicory’. UK ‘rump steak’ is known as
the granular form: ‘five-spice powder’, ‘curry US ‘sirloin’, while ‘sirloin’ usually denotes
powder’ and ‘chili powder’ (the last also to ‘porterhouse steak’. ‘Marrow’ can be bone tissue
distinguish it from the fresh chili). ‘Kasza perłowa’ or a type of AmE ‘squash’, but ‘squash’ stands for
will be familiar to most Polish housewives without concentrated juice drink. ‘Corn’ does not refer
the need to specify the cereal, but the English exclusively to ‘maize’. And, if one got their fingers
equivalent – ‘pearl barley’ – places more emphasis greasy, they should beware of confusing a
on the grain. ‘serviette’ with a ‘napkin’ when in the Western
The discrepancies in naming (and Hemisphere.
conceptualization) extend beyond food stuffs to
accessories and utensils. Terms such as ‘deska do 6 L’embarras du choix
krojenia’, ‘blat’, ‘kratka piekarnika’, ‘płytka’, So far, we have been discussing terms which have
‘papilotki’, or ‘folia spożywcza’ call for collocates unique recognized equivalents in another language.
that, without the accompanying contextual This is not a universal scenario, and many times
information, may at first glance seem semantically different dictionaries, the Wikipedia, and recipe
remote: ‘worktop saver’, ‘work surface’, ‘grill books will be using more than one term to refer to
rack’, ‘heat diffuser’, ‘muffin papers’, or ‘plastic the same item. Then, the translator may wish to
wrap//clingfilm’. In such cases of doubt make informed, usage-based choices—especially if
concerning the meaning of a particular expression, the end-result is to be consistent and deemed for a
deciphering the meaning of unknown items is particular target audience (e.g. the American or
frequently possible with the help of Google Canadian publishing market). One option is the
Images. Internet, but it is typically difficult to find sizeable
enough collections of texts that have been reliably
5 Intralinguistic discrepancies
edited for style, clarity, and uniformity. To our aid
Not all terms are equivalent even within the come corpora of texts that have not been designed
Anglosphere. The same ingredients often go by with the aim of computational analysis in mind,
different names on the two sides of the Atlantic. 3
4 Likewise, different Chinese-speaking regions have different
3 This also holds for other languages, e.g. Canadian French has names for butter: 黃油 (yellow grease) in mainland China, 牛
a somewhat different set of food-related terms than that used 油 (cow grease) in Hong Kong, and 奶油 (milk grease) in
in l’Hexagone. Taiwan (Yue 2014).
41
such as MasterCook, popular English-language confined plot of spices the translator often has to
cookery software which lends itself to effortless ponder on the character of the seed in question:
transformation into an LSP corpus and subsequent after all, ‘juniper berries’ do not look very much
profitable exploration. different from ‘black peppercorns’ (note the
spelling as one word), nor, when crushed, from
7 Methodology ‘cardamom seeds’. Likewise, one can enclose
stuffing in ‘rice paper sheets’ or ‘rice paper
The edition used in the current project came in the
wrappers’, but only ‘won ton wrappers’.
form of 17 stand-alone cookbooks containing over
1m word tokens and nearly 12k word types. The 9 Pre-processed ingredients
files, though bearing a unique dedicated extension,
are simple ASCII text files, uncluttered by Collocational competence is also requisite in the
metatags or other unnecessary code, and hence ingredient list when mention is made of already
amenable to the same search, sort and count pre-processed ones. Hence, ‘roast pepper’ is fine,
operations as regular untagged textual databases. while ‘baked pepper’ virtually nonexistent,
In order to create the corpus, the files were copied although no dictionary includes such information.
to a separate folder. 5 The collection was then Likewise, one will come across ‘sesame seeds –
explored with WordSmith Tools. 6 toasted’ and ‘cashews – roasted’, but not much the
This revealed that ‘arugula’ appears much more other way round. ‘Cracked black pepper’ behaves
often than ‘rocket’, and ‘garnish’ more than quite differently from ‘crushed green peppercorns’,
‘decorate’. Also, while dictionaries may list despite the fact that it is the same plant in question.
‘powder sugar’ among their entries, these terms Some collocations, e.g. certain trinomials, are
only sporadically or never occur in the corpus; frequent enough to be learnt by rote and
instead, ‘confectioner’s sugar’ and ‘icing sugar’ subsequently recycled, such as ‘avocado – peeled,
are used. The corpus may also help resolve pitted and diced’.
spelling dilemmas: ‘fillets’, ‘yogurt’, ‘gelatin’ and More contextualized collocations help resolve
‘aluminum’ (rather than ‘filets’, ‘yoghurt’, problems where more than one translational
‘gelatine’, or ‘aluminium’ – in this particular equivalent exists for a Polish term, but where they
collection of American English texts). are not interchangeable. For instance, ‘odstawić’
can mean ‘set aside (to cool)’ or ‘let stand (for 10
8 Unit names minutes)’; ‘ubić’ should be translated as ‘beat’
when dealing with egg whites, and ‘whip’ when
The compilation of a corpus of authentic LSP texts
cream is concerned.
becomes even handier where proper collocations
must be used. For instance, the form and unit 10 Prepositions
names in which plants and other ingredients are
used to culinary ends can be quite testing. Terminological acumen is one thing. The
‘Asparagus spears’, ‘parsley sprigs’ and knowledge provided by wisely compiled corpora
‘desiccated coconut’ may not boast sufficient input of specialized texts extends beyond the realm of
frequency in everyday discourse to render them encyclopedic and lexical knowledge to grammar as
readily available to a second-language user during well. One area that is responsible for a sizeable
a translation or interpreting task. Even on the very proportion of errors in learner language, chiefly
owing to interference from the mother tongue, and
5 As the utilitarian goal behind the compilation of the corpus consequently leaves a trace in translation attempts,
was aiding the translation and proofreading of actual is that of prepositions (Paradowski 2002).
cookbooks intended primarily for US readers, no parallel Reference to a language corpus quickly helps in
Polish-language corpus was created for this project.
6 The queries took the form of word strings, as regular the case of such often problematic examples as the
expressions would have posed little advantage, given that following: 7
rather than variations of the search strings, the primary focus
was on determining their co-text (and the corpus had not been
7 Phrasal examples provided throughout come from the
PoS-tagged for syntactic searches). The results for each query
were not downloaded, but merely inspected in the aforementioned corpus of MasterCook Deluxe and similar
concordance lines returned by the software. assembled American English recipes.
42
- zest of 1 orange//rind of 3 limes; arrange Ø feta, cheese and
- adjust oven rack to medium watermelon …;
position; - in Ø heavy nonstick skillet, heat
- add butter and grated parmesan 1 tbsp Ø oil over moderate heat
towards the end; until Ø hot but not smoking, then
- cut into 1”-rounds vs. cut in add Ø cakes, turning Ø over once,
half; until Ø browned and heated
- fry tomatoes with shallot in through, about 8 minutes total.
butter, blend; Textual ellipsis in recipes is a more widespread
- turning occasionally, until evenly phenomenon, extending beyond determiners to
browned on both sides; prepositions and nominal phrases; cf. ‘1 tsp Ø
- Place pear purée in saucepan and allspice’, ‘2 cups Ø orange juice’ (but: ‘pinch of
simmer, stirring occasionally, nutmeg’, as here the measure is less precise and
until reduced by half, Ø about 20 not premodified by a cardinal numeral), or ‘cover
minutes; and refrigerate Ø Ø at least 4 hrs or overnight,
- pour brandy over top and ignite; turning Ø fish occasionally’, where all the three
- Rub garlic all over pork grammatical categories have been left out. While
tenderloins, pat the salt mixture
no textbook mentions these things, a corpus will in
over pork, coating generously.
a few seconds.
11 Determiners and ellipsis A corpus may also help where more than one
article option is technically possible. For instance,
Another notorious and often cursed area for many the Wielki Słownik Angielsko-Polski PWN-Oxford
learners of English that tends to spill over into tells us that the collocation for ‘doprowadzić do
translations is that of articles, usage whereof, wrzenia’ is ‘bring to the boil’ (2004:124).
despite their high frequency and early exposure, However, a brief look at the collocation list in our
constitutes a great conceptual difficulty, primarily collection shows the absence this combination, and
owing to the absence of these functors in many L2- a preference for ‘a’ over the zero article. 9
ers’ mother tongues (Paradowski 2007:157).
Translating culinary texts presents a compounded 12 Compression of information; pre- vs.
problem here, for the genre tends to obey rules of postmodification
article usage quite unlike those imparted in even
university-level textbooks of general English. In Culinary texts are also useful to illustrate the
the context of the kitchen, the most common article relative compactness of the English language, not
is the zero one – once the ingredients have been only in terms of average word length and scarcity
provided, and given the relative universality of of inflectional suffixes, but also the tendency to
kitchens being equipped with a customary set of package and compress information, frequently
utensils and appliances, definiteness ceases to be using single-word terms that need more than one
an issue and the resultant need to encode it by lexeme in other languages. Verbs, in particular
means of the definite or indefinite article becomes passive participles are the most frequent
obviated. 8 Hence, typical cookbook concordance compressors of information, as in ‘chicken breasts
lines spat out from our corpus return: – skinned and boned’, ‘shrimp – peeled and
- transfer Ø turkey to Ø cutting deveined’ (cf. ‘obrane ze skóry i odfiletowane’,
board;
- press Ø through Ø sieve to remove 9 This does not mean that the construction provided in the
Ø seeds; printed dictionary is ill-formed; no, it is attested in the British
- soak Ø rice paper sheets one by National Corpus (where in the ‘bring to _ boil’ construction a
one and pat Ø dry. When Ø soft, preference can be observed for ‘the’ over the zero article, and
no instance can be found of the indefinite one) and in the
Larousse Gastronomique (2009). What it does tell us is that in
this edited selection of American recipes, the most common is
8 Recipes written in a more literary style and preceded by a
the construction with the indefinite article – hence, if the text
discussion and/or interspersed with the author’s digressions, translated is intended with the US audience in mind, ‘a’ may
however, naturally tend to approximate the general-English be a safe choice (while ‘the’ will work better for the UK
conventions of article usage. market).
43
‘pozbawione jelita’), ‘beer-battered fish’ (‘w (parts of speech) than in the source language.
piwnej panierce’), ‘stir-fried’ (‘smażone w woku’), Examine the following concordance lines:
‘curried egg sandwiches’, or ‘reduce, sieve and - 6⅛-ounce can white tuna packed in
add chopped cilantro’ (‘przetrzyj przez sito’). A water – drained (‘bez
short phrase can express several subsequent zalewy’)
actions, as in ‘transfer to wax paper-lined tray’. - working in batches, fry …
The ability of the English language to stack (‘partiami’)
- coat soufflé dishes or custard
prenominal adjuncts and easily manipulate their
cups with walnut mixture, knocking
grammatical categories further contributes to out excess//generously butter and
concision and condensation of information: ‘bake flour springform pan, tapping out
in preheated 350ºF oven’ instead of ‘piec w any excess flour
piekarniku nagrzanym do 175ºC’. Also the ability (‘wytrzepać nadmiar …’)
to form compound words, so typical of other West- - makes/yields about 50 crostini
Germanic languages, can contribute to stylistic (‘na ok. 50 grzanek’)
elegance: ‘simmer yucca in salted boiling water Notable also is the fact that while in Polish the
until fork-tender, 30 to 35 minutes’. animals whose meat is being served are typically
Notable due to this feature of the English denoted with an adjective (e.g. ‘kotlet schabowy’,
language is the possibility to avoid further the use ‘udziec jagnięcy’), English uses a nominal
of prepositions, which typically surface in the modifier, not in the Saxon genitive, but a
Polish equivalents, with the result that (despite periphrastic prepositional phrase:
both being left-headed languages) in place of Animals are rendered being-less not only by
Polish postmodification, English favors technology, but by innocuous phrases … After
premodification; consider ‘boneless pork loin’, being butchered, fragmented body parts must be
‘oriental-style’, or ‘crayfish won-ton’ (vs. renamed to obscure the fact that these were once
‘polędwiczka wieprzowa bez kości’, ‘w stylu animals. After death, cows become roast beef,
orientalnym’, ‘won-ton z krewetką/krewetkami’). steak, hamburger; pigs become pork, bacon,
sausage. Since objects are possessions they cannot
13 Information load have possessions; thus, we say ‘leg of lamb’ not a
‘lamb’s leg.’ (Adams 1990:47f.)
Yet, this renouncement of some lexical items and
the compression of information do not have to 15 Composition and information structure
communicate less; at times, on the contrary. This is
most frequent in the case of verbs, which apart The competence of a culinary translator does not
from the core meaning often convey additional end with encyclopedic knowledge, lexical fluency,
information on the circumstances of the activity, and familiarity with the grammatical conventions
the manner in which it is to be performed, or the of cookery texts. Another level of expertise relates
tool to be used 10 : ‘pat dry with paper towels’, to the relatively stable principles of composition
‘return tofu to skillet’, ‘spoon cucumber relish and information structure, with much higher
alongside’. homogeneity and considerably less variation than
licensed in other genres. This concerns both the
14 Grammatical category shift micro-level of word order in isolated phrases,
where it may differ between languages (cf.
As we have observed, idiomatic, target-like output ‘czerwone wytrawne wino’ vs. ‘dry red wine’, 11
of the translation process requires competent ‘… ugotowanych ziemniaków’ vs. ‘… potatoes –
employment of appropriate jargon and collocations. boiled’, or ‘czerwona cebula pokrojona w cienkie
This also entails familiarity with other conventions plasterki’ – ‘red onion – sliced thin//thinly sliced’),
of the discipline, including expression of certain and the discourse level of entire sentences, where
information using different grammatical categories in English it is typical to begin with the utensil or
kitchenware in which the dish is to be prepared,
10 As 11 Œnological nomenclature merits a stand-alone discussion in
befits a ‘satellite-framed’ language (leaving aside the
problems with Talmy’s original (1985, 1991) typology). its own right.
44
rather than with the key ingredients and demoting older texts, the second-person future declarative),
the appliance until the end of the sentence: but another visible trend has been to use the
- In food processor, pulse flour, infinitive or other impersonal constructions (with
salt and 1 tablespoon sugar to some scholars explicitly encouraging this in order
combine; to avoid shortening of the distance between author
- In large nonstick skillet, brown and reader, which in Polish seems not a welcome
ground beef over medium heat 8 to author-reader interaction, especially with the older
10 minutes or until no longer pink
generations; Jankowiak 2010:31).
On a macroscale, conventionalized English-
language recipes invariably begin with a 17 Coda
presentation of the ingredients, typically including
the preliminary preparation stages (‘¼ cup fresh We have overviewed a selection of the most
parsley – chopped’), followed by the instructions. characteristic features of cookbook English, its
Demoting the ingredients until the discussion of specialized taxonomy and professional
the preparation is relatively uncommon. Also, a nomenclature, syntactic and stylistic conventions,
much higher degree of consistent conformity can and discoursal features. Their combined
be observed in English-language (especially North contribution to a stereotyped, conventionalized text
American) cookbooks between the sequence in makes the end-result predictable, more directly
which ingredients are listed and the order in which available to, and easier for the initiated addressee
they appear in the instruction, to the extent that, “to act on the instructions promptly and
where a given mass foodstuff is used at different undisturbed by peripheral effects” (Nordman
stages of the process, the appropriate information 1996:564). A translation should be similarly
is nearly invariably indicated in the list of transparent for the audience. The translator’s
ingredients (e.g. ‘2 tbsp olive oil – divided’). In output ought thus to be accurate, but at once
recipes published over the Vistula, other scenarios idiomatic, native-like, and uniform, meeting the
are possible: ingredients may be presented in order genre-related expectations of the audience rather
of importance, with the key constituent coming than sticking rigidly to the convention of the
first, in order of appearance in the texts, or they source text. A novice to the field should check on
may be listed in an apparently arbitrary sequence. every new term and not take it for granted. Where
Also, in Poland lists of ingredients are meant to available, s/he may fall back on dictionaries and
prepare a shopping list, so additional notes at this the target-language versions of relevant entries in
stage may seem superfluous. the Wikipedia, as well as consult other secondary
Additionally, English-language readers expect references, but once s/he moves beyond the word
orderly paragraphing, where a Polish source may level, acquaintance with the genre becomes
be more of a run-on text. Some cookbooks indispensable. Given that accurate technical
additionally follow the trend of numbering the translation is not always available from
preparation steps. dictionaries, corpus analysis of judiciously
compiled reference material becomes vital to
16 Level of formality and impersonal provide insight into both the specific textual
constructions conventions, and the phrasal building blocks which
can be borrowed intact, for both novice and more
Last, but not least, the translator ought to be aware experienced translators as well as proofreaders and
of the interlinguistic differences in the verb forms editors of the end-product. In some cases, the
used to provide instructions, the register, and translator may even back her-/himself up with a
formal constructions used. For instance, directions reverse approach: where a recipe to be rendered in
in English-language cookbooks use the imperative the foreign language closely mirrors one already in
and impersonal forms: ‘season with salt and the corpus, s/he can take the latter one as model
pepper, if desired’, while the tendency to compress scaffolding and fill it out with the necessary detail.
information favors doing without the verbal form The general methodology outlined above can
altogether: ‘For sauce, mix all ingredients except easily be carried over to other thematic fields, and
…’ instead of ‘To prepare the sauce, …’. In Polish genre corpora have been an invaluable resource in
it has been customary to use imperatives (and, in
45
numerous domains for several years now. Apart interpret so that your text/translation/
from aiding human translation from scratch, interpretation functions in the situation and among
findings such as those discussed in this paper can the audience for whom it has been intended and in
also help improve the algorithms and performance the way it should function. (Vermeer 1989:20) 13
of machine translation systems. The statistical Such a functionalist approach in translation thus
component of most current MT solutions would means that rather than merely to provide similar
already take care of many of the collocation and impressions for the source and target text readers
colligation patterns and nuances, conceivably (as in equivalence-based approaches; e.g.
outperforming novice human translators. The Wojtasiewicz 1957), or foreignize the text in order
systems could also benefit from a component that to render it more understandable to the end
would identify the names of ingredients, utensils, audience (as in Nida’s (1964) dynamic equivalence
appliances and other accessories and be able to theory), the text should be “functionally
extract their counterparts e.g. from the Wikipedia, communicative” for the receiver (Holz-Mänttäri
evaluating the results in the case of several 1984). Repeatability, so frowned upon in many
synonyms being returned. 12 The genre-specific other spheres of life, in the gastronomic realm is
idiosyncrasies such as omission of articles and one of the preached and desired principles (which
other syntactic elements in turn build a case for is why many among even the top chefs rely on
training automatic translation systems on samples half-finished products). If the translator feels
of LSP rather than collections of general-language insecure (but for some reason had undertaken the
texts. Higher-, discourse-level properties of the task), the text may be consulted with a
genre may require deeper semantic processing and professional. 14 The value of practice can never be
therefore be more elusive to current commercial- underrated. Unlike many other areas of specialty,
level software. the advantage in translating culinary art is that the
As in dealing with any other consumer-oriented outcome can be tested in practice with relative
how-to type of text, the translator should be an ease.
expert in the given field, possess relevant factual
and cultural information and know what they are References
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13 „… jeder Text zu einem Gebrauch verfaßt wird, … er also
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the recipe. In line with Skopos theory stating that auch in diesem Gebrauch funktionieren soll:
Rede/schreib/übersetz/dolmetsch so, daß dein Text/deine
[e]ach text is produced for a purpose, and should Übersetzung/Verdolmetschung da funktioniert, wo sie
thus serve this purpose. Speak/write/translate/ eingesetzt werden soll, und bei denen, für die sie eingesetzt
werden soll, und so, wie sie es tun soll. Ich nenne das eine
„Skopos“ Regel.”
12 E.g. Linnaean taxonomy would be less helpful in the 14 Consulted, not edited, as then the danger exists of the chef
kitchen or grocery market than the ‘street’ name of the animal spoiling the transcript by unwarrantedly allowing her/his
or plant. idiosyncratic culinary style to dominate the text.
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