It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these, but lunch looked pretty good today at husband’s office cafeteria:
I’m surprised GT came up with “prison” for 콩밥 (rice with beans) because it’s a euphemism for “serving time,” but I would not be surprised to find an actual Bureau of Squid somewhere nearby, and am very concerned about the Jeyuk crisis simmered Night, which is how I’ve been feeling in this hothothot Seoul summer. I have no words for eggs and vegetables, though.
The romanization of the untranslated words, however, is curious. I wonder if “it” is translating the words based on prior examples of romanized Korean words, or if it has an algorithm for romanizing words it can’t translate? If the former, it says a lot about the approach taken towards translating words for Korean foods or objects that don’t have counterparts in the target languages. Translators, how often do you romanize instead of trying to translate? This is not a value judgement. I think there are pros and cons to both methods, and the words ultimately sound foreign whether translated or romanized precisely because they don’t have easy correlates.
The question of whether to translate descriptively or to introduce the native term is often a tough call in the name of readability and pedagogy, especially when introducing new objects or concepts. “Tofu,” is part of the English lexicon now, but I imagine it was initially introduced as “Japanese bean curd.” I have seen “bean curd” used in translations of Asian literature as well as in original work in English dealing with Asia, but at this point the foodstuff is ubiquitous in the U.S., and is in English language dictionaries (both the American Heritage and the OED cite 1880 as the first English usage of “tofu”). The food item appears on menus in Korean and Chinese restaurants alternately as bean curd and tofu, but rarely as “doobu” or “doufu,” their counterparts. The same can be said for a number of Chinese and Japanese words that have become naturalized in the English lexicon, but have cognates in other Asian languages: futon, Zen, congee, mochi, feng shui, to name a few. Of course, this has to do with when and how the items and concepts were introduced to the target language (English) and how they were popularized. The U.S. government (military) had a vested interest in promoting (or rehabilitating, as one scholar I know is currently researching) Japanese culture after WWII, and the media coverage of the new Japan introduced these items and concepts to the American public and language (just do a search on “Japanese culture” in Time magazine between 1945 and 1970 for a quick glance at the changing perceptions of Japan, Asia, and the introduction of Japanese aesthetics and culture, like this article covering an exhibition of Ukiyoe at Chicago’s Art Institute in 1955 — note the title “Out of the Floating World,” which already suggests some familiarity with Japanese art).
But I digress. Seriously.
An alarming number of translations of Korean children’s books (well, three that I’ve seen but that’s already alarming to me) use “corn cakes” for 떡 (ttuk), for what reason I can’t imagine, since it’s made with rice flour, but I assume the translators thought there was some folk correlation between corn cakes and ttuk. I find this to be a disservice to the reader because it makes false analogies between cultures, but I understand the difficulty, especially in children’s books, of conveying the right nuance in your translation. So…once again, translating is hard and there’s no one way to do it. Is that my conclusion to every post on translation? Sheesh.
Now, off to find that surrey prison. Tracking down a moving target is always hard.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to translate it again. Would it translate it the same way? Would it change? Would it write back in Cyrillic?
I have a feeling there’s a super computer computer laughing away to itself at the translations pulled off.
I would totally order the bureau of squid with a side of words for eggs and vegetables. Dee-lish!
One approach I’ve taken when translating is to first consider what the intent of the writing is. Of course that’s obvious, but what I mean is if the food being listed or described is supposed to seem appetizing, then I try to pick words that sound tasty, or I’ll mix romanized words with culinary English words, like “dwenjang stew”, so that the reader will at least understand what category of food it is. (Probably one of the worst challenges I’ve had to deal with was translating 미꾸라지 in a way that made it appealing. Because neither “loach” nor “mudfish” quite cut it. Of course now I can’t remember what I did…)
If it’s meant to be instructive, like a recipe, then I translate the hell out of each word (and maybe include the romanization in parentheses) to make it easier for the reader to track down the actual items.
In almost all cases, though, I try to avoid using correlatives, because I think food is too specific. For instance, I’ve seen mandu translated as ravioli, which just seems wrong to me. It’s one thing when you’re trying to explain to your friend what something is (“You know, it’s kinda like [fill in the blank], but it tastes more [fill in the blank]…”), but another when you’re trying to leave something for literary posterity.
Plus, it raises the problem of which culture’s food you correlate it with. Do you correlate it with another close ethnic group, like Japanese food, or do you only choose European foods? And what about the fact that most European foods are not, in fact, universal? Like, I could “translate” 국화빵 as aebleskiver, but that would make no kinda sense to non-Danish-familiar people.
Oh, and then there was the time I had to translate a passage that listed 17 different types of rice cake. That was… fun.
They are some interesting points you raised about food, and of course Korean food. All over Korea you see some awful sounding dishes when translated into English, but when you read the Korean you automatically know what it is and how it tastes and you’re not necessarily turned off by it.
I don’t do translations but I do teach English in one of the bigger universities and recently I had to explain to my students that pajeon is not Korean pizza, and in fact it is nothing like pizza even though they tried to explain it to me like that. I told them it’s a pajeon, plain and simple. If a person doesn’t know what it is then you can explain what it is actually is – a pancake (essentially) that goes great with makolli. People are much more interested in knowing what the actual food is called than what it actually is – think of all those times you go to an ethnic restaurant and someone asks what you’re having, and you proudly take a deep breath and attempt to pronounce what it is you’ve just eaten/ordered. At least, that’s from my own experiences.
I think another way to look at it is by looking at the food from other countries – pizza, ratatouille, sushi, taco, paella. These words are part of the English language because of our own familiarity with them and their regular usage, but Korean food isn’t as popular, or I should say as widespread. So the dishes aren’t as familiar to many of us, with the possibly the exception of kimchi, because we all know that kimchi is kimchi, and not Chinese cabbage fermented in ….