Cookbook and food translation
The blog was born in the last quarter of 2019 when new graduate Hannah Lawrence lured me into her #ThatTranslatorCanCook, a cooking, translating and blogging challenge she set herself to gain experience in the field of food translation. Via my posts and Twitter discussions, I shared (some of) the knowledge acquired in my MA dissertation research and specialist culinary translation course. Although it started with recipe and cookbook translation posts, it has started expanding into other areas, but life has taken over and it’s gone a bit quiet since July. Let’s hope for a more active 2021! So far I’ve written (about):
My dissertation
| Title | Foreignisation: the icing on the cake? |
| Corpus | La Tartine Gourmande, by Béatrice Peltre |
| Type | hybrid dissertation: translation of 6,000 words plus 9,000 essay including a translation commentary section |
What I did:
- Translate 6,000 words of this American cookbook written by a French author with a marked French voice, including introductory sections and recipes;
- Describe and discuss in the essay part what cookbook translation involves based on this experience and extensive academic research;
- Discuss in the commentary part some of the translation decisions I had to make in terms of foreignization vs domestication (conservation vs adaptation), closely linked to the author’s voice and to the mixed-genre cookbook format.