As an essential component to life, food makes an interesting subject for students in translation studies programs. The reason is that people from all nationalities and cultures have an opinion on it. Regardless of the nationality and the mother tongue of the person, everyone whose activity is related to translation, whether a beginner or an expert, have their own opinion on it. That is because all of us have feelings about food. An indispensable part of our lives, good food also is a material component of various events such as national holidays, religious celebrations, birthday parties, wedding receptions, and gatherings with friends and neighbors.
All translation students and professionals have opinions about food and just about everything related to it. While Russian Translation Professionals enjoy talking about borscht, German Translation workers are proud of their sausage, and Medical Translation workers just want us all to eat healthy. Besides, every translator worker has his or her own preference as regards a particular style of food such as fast food, junk food, cafeteria food, ethnic food, restaurant food, and the snacks you buy to munch 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.
The focal point of our activities in our series of articles titled, Starving For Russian Translation is ready, is food. While the subject is confined to food, our instructional activities relating 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 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. That’s because I think playing with language is so crucial to building language skills. Students need to develop an interest in words and their quirkiness, versatility, and power. English teachers have to do their best to get children involved in language. Play has power.
Although the idea to create this series of articles was mine, I was not the only one to work on it. In fact, my contribution to making it possible was quite humble. It was created with the help of Sarah Von Seggern, a German English Translation professional and Michael Antipov, a Russian Translation worker, who gave assistance to me in so many ways - content development, proofreading, fact-checking and many other. 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 will find this series of articles enjoyable and it will be useful in your translation sessions.
How are your discussions about food held when in class? Do you talk about disastrous attempts to make a special meal for an important event? Do you relish remembering the great homemade ravioli of your great-grandmother? Did a humorous event take place to a family member in a restaurant? Do you have your little jokes about how you all hated to eat the food, prepared by a relative because it tasted terrible?
Your first assignment is to write a story related to food. If you need some help thinking of one you may ask your classmates, friends and instructors. If you can’t think of anything at all, share any kind of memory you have of an occasion that involved food—maybe a special birthday meal.