Art-ology

Since every human being needs food to exist, it is natural students in translation studies programs to be interested in the subject.That is because people from all backgrounds and cultures feel strongly about this issue. Regardless of the language that a person speaks, everyone involved in translation, from beginning students to highly skilled professionals, have a set of beliefs that pertain to it. That is because all of us have feelings about food. 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 workers are proud of their borsch, German Translation professionals take pride in their sausage and Medical Translation workers just advise us to eat healthy. In addition, all translation workers prefer one particular style of food or other such as fast food, junk food, cafeteria food, ethnic food, restaurant food, and the snacks and popcorn you munch 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 English Russian 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. Some days, only a word game will fill the bill—something that will wake students up to paying attention to the languages they study.

Many of the activities in our series of writings involve games and creativity. The reason is that in my opinion language games have a crucial role in building language skills. Students need to be initiated in the strange, enchanting and powerful world of the words. English teachers have to do their best 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. 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.

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 enjoy thinking about the memories of your great-grandmother making homemade ravioli? Did a humorous event take place to a family member while eating out? 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. 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.