Assignment 9 ( Mariel Hemingway, 2009, Mariel's Kitchen)

Mariel Hadley Hemingway, born on November 22, 1961 in California, is well known American actress. But besides being an actress, she also found herself in writing, which is no wonder since she is a granddaughter of famous writer Ernest Hemingway.

In 2009, she published a cookbook known as Mariel’s Kitchen: Simple Ingredients for a Delicious and Satisfying Life. Filled with exciting and beautiful photographs and easy-to-follow instructions, Mariel’s Kitchen includes seventy-five sensational, doable recipes that are tasty enough to repeat.  With wide set of recipes suitable for every occasion, Mariel’s Kitchen is a new kind of American cookbook designed to help you and all those you cook for eat better , fresher and more delicious foods, day in and day out.

In the excerpt we got as a part of our homework, Mariel talks about the season shift- as cold winter is coming to an end with beautiful spring replacing its place, it is time for some changes on our dining table. She talks about the changes in the nature and brings that feeling into the kitchen.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Wikipedia.com, Google Images, Marielhemingway.com and the notes from the class. Our task was to translate this excerpt but also to see how difficult translation can be when we have some words characteristic for certain culture: it is a real challenge when it comes to finding corresponding equivalents. Dictionary did not help me a lot since for some types of vegetables and ingredients I had to look up for an image, so for this task, Google Images was of greatest help.

 “ Come springtime, I want to feel new” – the second part was little problematic for translation as I knew that I shouldn’t translate it as …želim da se osećam novo as it didn’t sound as something we would say in our language. After some thinking I decided to translate it as Kad dodje proleće, želim da se osećam drugačije (as she later explains why).

" cress salad " – For me, this was the most interesting word in the whole passage. I have never heard of this type of salad before and I did some research on the Internet. I found out that this type of salad originates from Russia and that there are several corresponding equivalents in our language: kres salata, potočac, etc.

" The watery feel of cucumber " - After a discussion we had in class, we agreed that watery shouldn’t be translated as vodnjikav ili vodenast as it has negative connotation. I decided to translate it Sočan (osvežavajući) ukus krastavca.

" bok choy" - kineski kupus

"tiny curls of new plant life " – I didn’t want to translate it as uvojci as it didn’t sound natural to me (this word is usually related to hair), so I translated it …golicaju jezik svojim mladim listićima.

When I finished my translation I read it two times to see whether it makes sense. I didn’t make any changes. The most difficult part of translation were the names of food but in the end I worked it out. The text was very interesting, however, not easy to translate, so i will grade it 5.