dag - gram

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of recipes and restaurant menus, which is cool because a), I always enjoy reading about food and learning new recipes (I love to cook almost as much as I love to eat!), and b), such translations tend to touch on a variety of languages all in one go (Italian, French etc).

 In all that time, one thing that I’ve often seen and that makes my teeth itch whenever I see it, is dag, and the bastardised plural form, dags. To me, Dags is a made-up sweet form of Dagmara. I have neighbours and colleagues called Dagmara, and I call ‘em Dags. It’s also a mis-spelling of dogs, or a literal spelling of that word in various Irish dialects.

 One thing it’s not though, is a unit of measurement for English speakers.

Professor Wiktoria Pedia tells us that a dag is the “symbol for decagram, a unit of mass equal to ten grams.” In other words, 1 dag (common Polish term) equals 1 decagram (common English term), which equals 10 grams.

 Note that in British English, we don’t even really use decagrams, or dg; rather, if a recipe calls for 10 grams of flour, we just say ‘10g flour’. The fix for dags then, is to just use g, or write grams, instead of 1 dag, 3 dags etc. An example from a cake recipe on the BBC Food website:

For the lemon drizzle
4 lemons, juice only
75g/2¾oz caster sugar

For the sponge
200g/7oz caster sugar
200g/7oz unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
2 lemons, zest only
3 free-range eggs, beaten
200g/7oz self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting

Note that the OED doesn’t even have a definition for dag that says anything about it as a unit of measurement. (Although it says quite a lot about it being a term for a piece of sheep dung stuck to wool!).

 This issue is also interesting because it highlights the fact that not only are there different ‘established’ measurement systems – all with their own terminology – that depend largely on what country (or language) you’re in, but that some of them are considered current and some not. This is the type of thing that can change based on your age and generation – older translators may tend to use different words which are no longer relevant to the systems employed today. It all depends on what you’re used to and how capable you are of remembering these details and being flexible in your translation; ideally you’d be aware that this kind of thing is a potential issue and would endeavour to check your vocabulary and use the current, standard terms for the TT language and text you’re working in.

 I think that this issue highlights an important point – Your dates, money amounts, punctuation usage, time formatting and all weights and measurements etc, are all equally as important as the actual words and body text. Be a Marine in your translating work, and leave no character behind! 

 (also, anyone who gives me cake automatically becomes A Friend For Life ;)