Learning Translation Skills Through Food
Since every human being needs food to exist, it is natural students in translation studies programs to be interested in the subject.The reason is that people from all nationalities and cultures have an opinion on it. Whatever the language he or she speaks, everyone who needs to translate, from beginning students to professionals fluent in English, have certain beliefs related to the subject. The reason is that food involves people emotionally. It is not only an important part of our lives, it also plays an important role in celebrations such as national holidays, religious celebrations, birthday parties, wedding receptions, and gatherings with friends and neighbours.
All translation students and professionals have opinions about food and just about everything related to it. While Russian Translation Professionals enjoy talking about their blini, German Translation workers boast about their sausage, while Medical Translation workers just tell us to consume healthy food. 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. In addition, we all have different thoughts about what we like to put on our food like salt, ketchup, red pepper, barbeque sauce, steak sauce, sauerkraut and so on.
Our activities in our series of articles titled, Eat The Russian Translation, are focused on food. The subject is confined to food, but our training activities related to language studies are quite varied. One article may give information about verbs, another may discuss vocabulary and the next may be about writing a topic. Sometimes we may offer only a word game – something that will focus on the languages the students study.
A large part of the activities in our series of writings include games and encourage creativity. It is intentional – in my opinion language games play an essential part in building language skills. Students need to be initiated in the queer, enchanting and powerful world of the words. English teachers have to do their best to turn kids on to language. Play has power.
This series of articles was my idea, however, I am not the only major contributor to it. What I did was only a small part of the effort that went into making it possible. Sarah Von Seggern, a German Translation worker and Michael Antipov, a Russian Translation professional, contributed to it and assisted me in various ways – writing, proofreading, checking facts and other. Thank you also goes to Jennifer Martinez, a Spanish Translation professional who also assisted in a variety of ways. 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 talk about a time when you wanted badly to make a special meal but everything went wrong? Do you enjoy remembering your great-grandmother’s homemade ravioli? Did something funny happen to a family member in a restaurant? Do you make jokes about the food made by a relative which all of you hated because of its awful taste?
In the first task, we encourage you to write a story about food. If you need some help thinking of one you may ask your classmates, friends and instructors to make suggestions. If you can’t think of anything at all, write about anything you remember and is related to food – maybe a special occasion where food was served, or special meal.
About the Author
TMA provides birth certificate translation and Diploma and Transcript Translation
Learn Russian Lesson – Future Tense of Russian Verbs
