Art-ology

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.That is because people from all backgrounds and cultures feel strongly about this issue. 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. 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 like talking about borscht, German Translation workers boast about the qualities of their sausages and Medical Translation workers just ask us to eat healthy. Besides, all translation workers have some own preferences as regards fast food, cafeteria food, junk food, ethnic food, restaurant food, and the snacks and popcorn you buy to eat while watching a movie. Moreover, all of us have different preferences about what we like to put on our food like salt, ketchup, red pepper, various kinds of sauces, sauerkraut 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 topic of the series is food, however, we offer a wide variety of language-related instructional activities. One article may give information about verbs, another may discuss vocabulary and the next may be about writing a 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. 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 need to do all they can to turn kids on to language. Play is a powerful tool to do so.

Although the idea to create this series of articles was mine, I was not the only one to work on it. What I did was only a small part of the effort that went into making it possible. Sarah Von Seggern and Michael Antipov, a German Translation worker and a Russian Translation professional respectively, rendered their assistance to me in so many ways – they wrote some parts, proofread content, checked 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 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 discuss a time when you were unsuccessful in preparing a special meal? Do you enjoy remembering how your great-grandmother used to make wonderful 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 assignment, we encourage you to write about a story relating to food. Talk to classmates, friends and instructors if you need some help thinking of one. 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.