Translating Grilled Cheese

Published by

Clarissa

July 5, 2012

The most difficult thing to translate are concepts that have no equivalent in the target language. I’ve been struggling for 10 minutes with the expression “grilled cheese.” What can be simpler (and more delicious) than a good grilled cheese sandwich? Yet, the Russian equivalent does not exist because grilled cheese isn’t cooked in Russian-speaking countries.

One way out of this is linguistic borrowing. Until the word “boyfriend” became a word in Russian (it sounds exactly the same and is spelled with Russian letters), one had to say something like “the man I’m seeing romantically” to transmit the idea.

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26 responses to “Translating Grilled Cheese”

Leah Jane

July 5, 2012

That made me hungry. And it reminded me of the way Japanese teachers try to explain okonomiyaki to Western students. 🙂

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 5, 2012
  
  I’ve never tried okonomiyaki.
  
  OK, now I’m hungry, too. 🙂
  
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  1. Leah Jane
    
    July 5, 2012
    
    If it were an American dish, they’d call it something like “Kitchen Sink Pizza”, because it’s a savoury dish that has “everything but the kitchen sink” in it, meat, eggs, cabbage, shrimp, green onions, squid…
    I want to go back to Osaka now!
    
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  2. Pooh Huffy
    
    July 5, 2012
    
    The “Grilled Cheese” thing is interesting, I once worked with a dude from Bosnia and I noticed him watching me put toppings on a Hot Dog and copying me.
    When we were eating them in the truck he said “This is good, very good”.
    It never occurred to me that someone would not know what to put on a Hot Dog.
    A Colby / Monterrey Jack Cheese sandwich with Onions cooked in a cast iron skillet with lots of Butter would be almost impossible to explain.
    Getting hungry?
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      July 5, 2012
      
      “I once worked with a dude from Bosnia and I noticed him watching me put toppings on a Hot Dog and copying me.
      When we were eating them in the truck he said “This is good, very good”.”
      
      – This happened to me, too! 🙂 I had no idea one could actually improve a hot dog. 🙂
      
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Pooh Huffy

July 5, 2012

On Whole Wheat with all those little chunks of grain, whatever they call that.

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Pooh Huffy

July 5, 2012

I’ve worked at a College for just over 10 years, I work in Housing Maintenance and describe my job as trying to fix things faster than College Students can break them.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 5, 2012
  
  🙂 🙂
  
  That’s a tough but important job.
  
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musteryou

July 5, 2012

http://news.yahoo.com/moms-whose-lives-revolve-around-baby-suffer-225756386.html

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Pen

July 5, 2012

It’s also fun when faced with two or more words that mean exactly the same thing, but one thing is not exactly the same as the other thing. We had an awkward moment last semester in French when someone was talking about a boyfriend and the whole class thought it was just “friend,” and someone commented on it.

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1. jenniagnes
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  Arrrrgh it’s similar in German. I love German but one of the few things that I HATE is the fact that they have no separate word for ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’. If you want to talk about your boy/girlfriend, you say ‘mein[e] Freund[in]’. Simple enough, but then you have to get your head round saying ‘ein[e] Freund[in] von mir’ every time you want to refer to someone who’s just a regular, non-romantic friend. It gets really, really annoying when you’re trying to tell a story that involves a friend but haven’t used their name. ‘So I was with a friend of mine… and then the friend of mine said… and then the friend of mine and I did blah blah blah…’
  
  This also leads to some confusing misunderstandings, like when I spent half the night at a party disappointed for no reason because my (male) romantic interest had referred to a friend as ‘mein Freund’, leading me to mistakenly believe that he was gay.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 6, 2012
    
    This is a great story, Jenny Agnes! 🙂
    
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2. Glenn Gardner
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  Same in other countries. Woe be the person going out with someone steadily in Mexico and you introduce her as “una amiga” instead of “mi novia, mi pareja, etc” (or avoid it all by just saying her name without reference to the relationship to you). And that despite the fact “novio/novia” can mean anything from grammar-school puppy love, through various stages (i.e., my boyfriend, steady boyfriend, guy I’m going out with for now, up to fiancé and bridegroom). Terms like “mi amiguita” (French “petite amie”) have quite a different value.
  
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el

July 6, 2012

I checked Multitran and got сыр-гриль. AND:
grilled cheese sandwich — горячий сандвич с сыром

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1. n8chz
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  I vote for горячий
  
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Z

July 6, 2012

Vignette about food and names of food — all those summers in Mexico and I never figured out why, with all the food they had there, they had such an interest in hot dogs: there are all these hot dog stands. Finally, I found out that they were not US style boring hot dogs, they are more or less unrecognizable from that point of view. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/dining/26unit.html

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  Now I want to go to Mexico. I love hot dogs with a passion but I’ve never tried such a pretty one.
  
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2. Glenn Gardner
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  Must be the 4th of July spirit. Don’t know if I agree about how much more interesting “Mexican hotdogs” are just because they’re on “el otro lado”. I live in Mexico. Usually you don’t know what’s in them (even LESS than in the US)…certainly tough to find “all beef” ones (if you prefer that taste). Upper-class Mexicans buy either Oscar Mayer (more expensive), kosher ones, or imported US brands at Sams, Costco. There is/was a place specializing in hotdogs in the Colonia Condesa on Alfonso Reyes and Tamaulipas streets.
  Guess you’ve never tried Chicago style (never ketchup), NY style, Texas style….
  Look up “hotdogs in Mexico City” on Google or “hot dog variations” on wiki…the description of Mexican hotdogs in the latter is not one known to me here…depends on the stand…most are just normal.
  
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Sarah

July 6, 2012

Is grilled cheese cheese on toast?

I thought I’d blogged about Brit cheese on toast compared with French but can’t find it, so either I’m imagining it or Blogger’s cast it into a black cyber hole.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  They put cheez on toast and then grill the entire thing. Sometimes bacon is added, and that is the best kind of grilled cheese. 🙂
  
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el

July 6, 2012

(Russian) Brazil tries to improve children’s food:
http://www.evrika.ru/hotnews/1349

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 6, 2012
  
  Brazilian food is amazing. I have no idea why Brazilians would switch to fast food when their own food is so great. I understand why the Americans would in the total absence of their own distinctive and, more importantly, palatable food. But the Brazilians?
  
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Translating Grilled Cheese | Metaglossia: The Translation World | Scoop.it

July 6, 2012

[…] The most difficult thing to translate are concepts that have no equivalent in the target language. I’ve been struggling for 10 minutes with the expression “grilled cheese.” What c… […]

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Glenn Gardner

July 6, 2012

Take a look at Rheingold, “They Have a Word for It” for one-of-a-kind terms in different languages

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Edward Lauber (@EdLauber)

July 7, 2012

I work in Africa where the staple foods are very different from my US roots. Finding English translations for fufu and kenke, for example, is a creative task. Anyone just use the local word in italics and then explain it in a footnote?

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 7, 2012
  
  I was translating instructions for a game app, so a footnote was not an option. Many kinds of translation do not admit of a footnote.
  
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