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Commentary
In my translation I tried
to fulfil the requirements of the brief as closely as possible.
Thus my main aim was to create a text that a non-specialist British
audience would find both clear and easy to understand.
There were a number of changes I had to make. First of all, the
layout of the text. Because of the differences between Spanish and
English textual conventions, I decided to divide my recipe into
4 main sections: title, ingredients, method, and a final specification
of the amount of servings.
In the title, I opted for a simplification of the title: 'Quick
Valencian Paella' rather than the literal rendering 'A recipe of
…' As the text is going to be part of a recipe book, the preceding
phrase becomes redundant. I decided to add the adjective 'quick'
to attract the readers' attention to the recipe and encourage them
to try it.
As for the ingredients section, the main changes here refer to the
different measuring units used in Britain and Spain. Thus, Spain
uses the metric system, whereas, in Britain, the imperial system
has been the one most commonly used. In recent years, however, the
metric system has also been adopted, which led me to include both
systems in my translation. In this way, the text complies with current
practice but it is also easily accessible to those readers who may
not be familiar with metric units.
As regards the amount of saffron to be used, I decided to measure
it in spoons, rather than counting 'threads', as in the Spanish
text.
There is another element worth mentioning in my translation of the
ingredients, and this is the translation of 'rabbit'. Although the
literal translation of this term did not constitute a translation
problem, I found that this type of meat is not typically used or
consumed in British households. As a result, this recipe may not
be too appealing to this particular audience. For this reason, in
order to make the recipe more acceptable to British taste, I decided
to add an alternative ingredient that could be used as a substitute
(pork in this case).
As regards the section on method, the main changes here refer to
syntax and verb tenses. The 'Pasiva Refleja' (see underlined verbs
below) is commonly used in instructional texts in Spanish, whereas
English prefers infinitives. For example:
ST:
Se cortan el pollo y el conejo en 8 trozos regulares cada
uno, se salan, se pone el aceite a calentar en la
paellera y se sofríen muy bien y lentamente los trozos
de pollo y conejo.
TT:
Cut the chicken …. Heat the oil … and cook the chicken ...
As can be seen in the
example above, the Spanish text makes use of long sentences containing
multiple elements separated by commas. In my version, I structured
the text into shorter sentences that correspond to each particular
stage of the cooking process. As a result, the textual organisation
is different but the instructions become clearer and more acceptable
in English.
At the lexical level, it is worth commenting on the word paellera.
This is a cooking utensil used in Spain to cook paella. The correct
name of this utensil is, in fact, paella, the same name as
the dish. By keeping the original term in my recipe, my aim is to
preserve the 'Spanish' element of this recipe and to show the reader
how it is cooked in Spain. However, because paellas are difficult
to find in Britain, and ultimately I would like the reader to cook
the dish, I also provide a functional description of the term ('wide
saucepan').
With these strategies, my aim was to create a text that, on the
one hand, was acceptable to a British audience and appealing to
British taste, and, on the other hand, a text that reminded the
reader of the dish's Spanish culture.
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