Love to Cook - Rumer's Cookery Book Tutorial By Ros Coffey of RosMadeMe Blog

Are you looking for the perfect gift to make your favorite cook, your Mum, your daughters or granddaughters who LOVE to cook?  If you are then you'll be pleased to know that Ros Coffey has a wonderful tutorial on her RosMadeMe Blog blog showing you how to make a bag to store all those handwritten family recipes.  What a wonderful idea for gifts this holiday season.  Thanks, Ros.

Love to Cook - Rumer's Cookery Book Tutorial

Copyright © 2012 - All Rights Reserved - Written by Ros Coffey of RosMadeMe Blog.

Here's what Ros had to say about her tutorial:  I have a friend called Rumer, she likes to cook, mind you she also likes to knit, sew and play on her DS, which is not a bad thing considering her mum runs our local yarn shop. When I saw her today, she said she wanted to make lemon drizzle cake and then we started talking about her granny's amazing chicken soup and I thought now is the time for her to start collecting her family recipes in her own cook book which is why we are going to make her very own book to gather up the recipes. I wonder if like me and my mum you have recipes books filled with hand written little scraps of paper with your beloved family recipes, if you do then this is the perfect project for you start on.

Ros's Bio:I live by the sea, in Essex, in Leigh-on-sea. I have been making things since I was a child, earliest memories were embroidering squares of binca matting, making felt egg cups and ripping back my knitting when my sister had picked up a dropped stitch... yep, it really did have to be all my own work! I am a dreadful hoarder, with stashes of wool and fabric hidden around my house, together with the projects that I have not yet finished. I am currently making cushions, quilted, appliqued, stencilled... actually just anything that I will enjoy crafting.

Copyright © 2010 - 2012 - All Rights Reserved - Ros Coffey of RosMadeMe Blog .

Please visit her RosMadeMe blog at http://rosmademe.blogspot.com .

Idiom! with Guest Columnist, Dotty

Idios, idiosyncratic, idiomatic, idiom... All begin with the Greek root idio, meaning ‘private’ and indicating something like ‘of the self’. It’s perhaps ironic then that common idiom, which begins as language private or internal to a person or group, spreads out and becomes commonplace. It’s also frustrating for translators, because literal translations of idiom rarely work well enough to make them worth the effort.

Today we have a special treat as we’re joined for this, our inaugural look at idioms, by a very good friend of the Article. She’s an experienced translator who found a job juggling English-Polish translations in visual media, and believe me, when she speaks, I listen. I asked her for a quote on the subject and she came back a couple of minutes later with this, so let’s turn it over to her now and see what she has to say. Please give a very warm welcome to Dotty. Take it away Dots!

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One might think that translating idioms is a piece of cake. All you have to do is just find the TL equivalent, right? Well, right and wrong. Obviously, it all depends on the type of translation we’re considering, but in most cases the TL equivalent is the most straightforward and efficient strategy.

But what if we are dealing with an ST that is not an independent piece of written text, but that exists within a more complex picture-text relationship? Take a movie trailer, for example, or a promotional video for a TV programme, which is what I had to deal with quite recently and which turned out to be the most annoying idiom issue I have so far encountered (undoubtedly, another one is just around the corner). The promo was for a British cooking programme that was to be broadcast in Poland. The whole programme was a very competitive cooking contest and the video spot was for the final episode, so it was quite fast-paced and lively, and with the whole thing obviously taking place in a kitchen, the viewer could almost feel the extreme heat of the competition.

This was emphasised by repeated shots of the fires on the stove, and it begged the expression of the contestants getting “out of the frying pan into the fire”, which is exactly what the English producer had used. Now, if you think what the Polish equivalent for this idiom is, you will understand my annoyance back then. How on earth could you relate rain or a gutter to the heat of a fierce cooking competition? Literal translation was not going to work and the discrepancy in the spoken idioms’ imagery did not help.

In these cases, I need to think of a nice way to verbally fill in the idiomatic gap and link the visuals with the text by means of a witty description.

***

So, a little inventive wit was the answer to that problem, but since levity isn’t always appropriate, what else can we do? Of course, there are books full of appropriate strategies, but we want to hear from you. What clever – or brutal – solutions have you found to the problem of translating idiom? Email or comment and share your ideas! And don't forget, if there are any strange idioms you'd like to know more about, write and ask!

in case of - in the case of

Idioms are fun, and powerful too. They’re the herbs and spices in the translator’s kitchen, and as anyone who likes to cook knows, judicious and appropriate use of a little seasoning in your food can elevate it from sublime to ridiculous. Errr, elevate it from good to great. That’s it.

 Today we have on our chopping boards two tasty, valid expressions that are being confused with each other. in case of is being used instead of in the case of. This is quite a common mistake and easy to make when you’re on a (cheese) roll. This is a classic example: Colonel Grzyborowska reported that the base was running short of ammunition, which would only last 4 days in case of the infantry, and 2 days in case of the artillery.

 So, definitions:
 in case of = in the event of something happening,
 in the case of = in the particular situation of,

 See how the article changes the meaning? 

 In case (of)
1a      In case of emergency, break glass with hammer and press alarm button.
2a      In case I’m late home tonight, dinner is in the oven. Just heat it up.
3a      Take your umbrella, just in case it rains.
4a      In case of a problem with the seating, there are 50 fold-up chairs in the room next door.

In the case of

1b      In the case of Collins Vs. Gabriel 1973, no distinct verdict was reached.
2b      Marek’s okay, he’s just quiet. In the case of Darek, however, I’d lock up the pills.
3b      In the case of financial discrimination against translators and proofreaders, a zero tolerance approach is called for.

Alternative phrasing for in the case of is to say in X’s case, e.g. In Darek’s case, I’d lock up the pills. Note too the useful in the event of, which is the nearly-twin brother of in case of, but which we can deploy when the scale of the situation becomes more epic. For example, In the event of a war, we expect our missiles to land first, or In the event of a zombie apocalypse, all our Shaun of the Dead fantasies will come true.

In any event (or at any rate), try to remember the distinction here – it seems like a subtle thing, but it makes a whole case-load of difference.