Fine Tuning Russian Translation Over Food
We all know how important food is to every human being, so it is natural to attract the interest of students involved in translation studies programs.The reason is that people from all nationalities and cultures have an opinion on it. Regardless of his or her native language, everyone involved in translation, from beginning students to experienced translation workers, have their own opinion on it. That is because all of us are emotionally related to food. While it is an important part of our lives, it also plays an important role in celebrations that can include national holidays, religious celebrations, birthday parties, wedding receptions, and the entertaining of friends and neighbors.
All translation students and professionals have opinions about food and just about everything related to it. While Russian Translation Professionals like talking about borscht, German Translation workers boast about the qualities of their sausages and Medical Translation workers just ask us to eat healthy. In addition, all translations workers have some sort of preference when it comes to a particular style of food such as fast food, junk food, ethnic food, cafeteria food, restaurant food, airplane food, and the “food” you buy to snack on at a movie theater. Besides, we all have our own preferences about what we like to eat our food with – some people consume more salt and pepper, other less, some people like ketchup, other do not, and so on.
The focal point of our activities in our series of articles titled, Starving For Russian English Translation is ready, is food. The subject is confined to food, but our training activities related to language studies are quite varied. One article may say something about verbs, another may deal with vocabulary, and the next may be about a writing topic. Sometimes only a word game will be added-something that will make students pay attention to the languages they study.
Many of the activities in our series of writings involve games and creativity. That’s because I think playing with language is so crucial to building language skills. Students need to become aware of the quirkiness, versatility and power of words. English teachers need to do all they can to turn kids on to language. Play is a powerful means to do so.
Althought the idea to write this series of articles was mine, I was not the only one to contribute to it. In fact, I was only a small part of the effort that went into making it this possible. Sarah Von Seggern, a German Translation to English worker and Michael Antipov, a Russian Translation professional, worked alongside me and assisted in so many ways—writing, proofreading, fact-checking, you name it. I also have to thank to Sandra Hernandez, a Spanish Translation professional, who also cooperated with me in the development of this series. I hope you enjoy The Translation Is Ready and find it useful in your translation teachings.
What are the stories about food you discuss in your classroom? Do you discuss a time when you were unsuccessful in preparing a special meal? Do you enjoy thinking about the memories of your great-grandmother making homemade ravioli? Did a humorous event take place to a family member in a restaurant? Do you laugh at how you all hated to eat the food that a relative made because it tasted terrible?
In the first assignment, we encourage you to write about a story relating to food. If you need some help thinking of one you may ask your classmates, friends and instructors to make suggestions. If it still doesn’t come to your mind what to write about, share any kind of memory you have of an occasion where food was served – a special meal for a birthday, for example.