The Relationship Between Translation Studies And Gastronomy: MELCEÜ’T TABBAHİN And Its Back Translation
In essence, gastronomy may be defined as the transformation of food and beverage culture into a scientific discipline and an art form. The discipline of gastronomy encompasses a wide array of topics including food production, consumption and post-consumption and is in close contact with other fields such as sociology, anthropology, history, and literature due to its nature and scope. This situation suggests that gastronomy may also be related to translation studies. In this sense, translation studies has recently begun to incorporate gastronomy into its own research areas. It is becoming increasingly common to encounter studies that adopt an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to the translation of food within translation studies. In this context, Melceü’t Tabbahin (Mehmed Kâmil, 1844) which is regarded as the first printed cookbook in the Ottoman period and is considered a masterpiece in the field of Turkish gastronomy, and its back-translation from English, Turkish Cookery Book (Türabi Efendi, 1862) to Turkish, Osmanlı Mutfağı (Aktürk, 2005) will be the subject of this study. The objective of the present study is firstly to identify the manner and extent of the interdisciplinary relation between translation studies and gastronomy. Using a gastronomical text as an example, the study also problematizes whether back-translation (Shuttleworth et al., 2014) can be used as an updating tool in translation research. Finally, the role of the intermediary language in back-translation and the type of individual shifts (Popovic, 2012) the back-translator uses when s/he encounters difficulties in the translation process, and for what purpose, are investigated.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Emre Beyaz is a research assistant in the department of Translation Studies at Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University. He holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Dokuz Eylül University. With a background in translation studies, his research focuses on food and translation, translation sociology, and culture and translation.