BRAZILIAN COOKING TERMS IN

ENGLISH

Rozane R. Rebechi (FAPESP)

University of São Paulo – Brazil

TSS - July 9-13, 2012

STATE OF THE ART

There are no Portuguese-English reference works

on Brazilian cooking;

Terminology of Brazilian cooking in English is

not standardized;

TSS - July 9-13, 2012

CONSEQUENCES...

Wrong definitions:

petiscos → ‘candies made from grated hard

cheese, sugar, egg yolks and lemon’

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CONSEQUENCES...

‘Translation’ which leads to mischaracterization of cultural markers

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≠

cachaça rum

CONSEQUENCES

Mispelling

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´Lagarta ao mostarda´ ´Lagarto com Molho

de Mostarda´

≠

OBJECTIVES

Build a Portuguese-English glossary of Brazilian cooking terms;

Main target users → translators; writers ; travelers (2014 World Soccer Cup, 2016 Olympic Games)

Why?

General language dictionaries and general cooking glossaries are not comprehensive enough to provide equivalents and definitions for terms which are not familiar to English speakers;

TSS - July 9-13, 2012

BASED ON CORPUS LINGUISTICS PRINCIPLES:

→ COMPILATION OF A PARALLEL AND A COMPARABLE CORPORA

OF BRAZILIAN COOKING RECIPES:

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3 cookbooks written in

Portuguese and

translated into

English (64.000

tokens)

Portuguese → 7

cookbooks written in

Portuguese (175.000

tokens)

English → 11

cookbooks written in

English (283.000

tokens)

Parallel Comparable

AUTOMATIC RETRIEVAL OF TERM CANDIDATES BY COMPARING

THE STUDY CORPUS TO A REFERENCE CORPUS OF GENERAL

COOKING RECIPES (KEYWORDS, WST 6)

N Key word Freq. % RC. Freq. RC. % Keyness P

1 CHEIRO-VERDE 308 0,19 178 0,01 865,66 0

2 MANDIOCA 382 0,24 418 0,03 796,34 0

3 KG 657 0,41 1.839 0,12 613,36 0

4 DÁ 220 0,14 142 592,29 0

5 COCO 501 0,31 1.158 0,07 582,16 0

6 AZEITE-DE-DENDÊ 141 0,09 51 460,32 0

7 NUMA 870 0,55 4.157 0,26 322,5 0

8 PIRÃO 118 0,07 85 303,38 0

9 CAMARÃO 282 0,18 726 0,05 290,84 0

10 CHARQUE 88 0,06 32 286,85 0

11 COENTRO 252 0,16 622 0,04 272,6 0

12 PEIXE 354 0,22 1.162 0,07 265,71 0

13 COLORAU 74 0,05 33 227,21 0

14 FEIJÃO 225 0,14 593 0,04 225,74 0

15 CARNE-DE-SOL 60 0,04 12 223,69 0

16 PORCO 173 0,11 365 0,02 220,14 0

17 OLIVEIRA 59 0,04 12 219,29 0

18 PICADOS 294 0,18 976 0,06 216,95 0

19 RENDE 75 0,05 41 215,04 0

20 CEBOLAS 284 0,18 949 0,06 207,51 0

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DIFFERENT ‘TRANSLATION’ STRATEGIES

mandioca → manioc; cassava

cachaça → cachaça

farinha de milho → ????

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GENERAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARIES AND

GENERAL COOKING GLOSSARIES

farinha de milho

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Indian meal

corn meal/cornmeal

maize flour

corn flour/cornflour

En→ En dictionaries

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cornmeal → a type of [yellow] flour made from corn

fubá

FUBÁ X FARINHA DE MILHO

fubá: product obtained by grinding the corn grain

→

→

farinha de milho:

product obtained from

roasted corn, previously

macerated, pounded and

sieved;

≠

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SEARCH IN THE PARALLEL CORPUS: ALIGNED

SENTENCES

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SEARCH IN THE COMPARABLE CORPUS

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SEARCH IN COCA (CORPUS OF

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ENGLISH)

Main collocates with ‘flaky’ → pastry, pie, dough

etc.

Main collocates with ‘flaked’ → coconut, cup,

sweetened etc.

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PROPOSAL OF GLOSSARY ENTRY

farinha de milho (n.) flaked cornmeal

Pre-cooked meal made from corn.

Break up the flakes of cornmeal with your hands, forcing it

through the sieve. [Brazil: a Culinary Journey].

Brazilian flaked cornmeal is used in recipes such as

cuscuz and farofa.

See fubá

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fubá (n.) cornmeal

Add the salt. Mix 1 1/4 cups of cornmeal with the cold water and

stir into the boiling water and cook until tender, stirring often so it

won't scorch.

A type of flour made from maize.

There are two main types of fubá in Brazil - the fubá mimoso, very

finely ground (like corn flour), which imparts a finer texture to

foods such as porridges and cakes, and the fubá grosso, coarser

and sometimes simply referred to as fubá (in terms of texture

similarity, somewhere between medium to finely ground

cornmeal). There are several other kinds of corn flours and meals

available, and most of them have a precooked version.

See farinha de milho

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CHALLENGES

Find a suitable terminology management tool;

Ensure standardization of glossary entries

(definitions)

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Thank you!

rozanereb@gmail.com

TSS - July 9-13, 2012