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Bad Cooking to Gain Interpretation Abilities

We all know how important food is to every human being, so it is natural to attract the interest of students involved in translation studies programs.That is because people from all nationalities and cultures are familiar with the subject. Regardless of the nationality and the mother tongue of the person, everyone whose activity is related to translation, whether a beginner or an expert, have their own opinion on it. That is because all of us have feelings about food. While it is an important part of our lives, it also plays an important role in celebrations that can include national holidays, religious celebrations, birthday parties, wedding receptions, and the entertaining of friends and neighbors.

All translation students and professionals have opinions about food and just about everything related to it. While Russian Translation Professionals enjoy talking about borscht, German Translation workers are proud of their sausage, and Medical Translation workers just want us all to eat healthy. Besides, every translator worker has his or her own preference as regards a particular style of food such as fast food, junk food, cafeteria food, ethnic food, restaurant food, and the snacks you buy to munch at a movie theater. Besides, we all have our own preferences about what we like to eat our food with - some people consume more salt and pepper, other less, some people like ketchup, other do not, and so on.

Our activities in our series of articles titled, Eat The Russian Translation, are focused on food. While the subject is confined to food, we offer a wide range of various instructional activities relating to language studies. One article may give information about verbs, another may discuss vocabulary and the next may be about writing a topic. Sometimes only a word game will be added-something that will make students pay attention to the languages they study.

A large part of the activities in our series of writings include games and encourage creativity. That’s because I think playing with language is so crucial to building language skills. Students need to get interested in words and their quirkiness, changeability and power. English teachers have to do their best to turn kids on to language. Play is a powerful tool to do so.

Althought the idea to write this series of articles was mine, I was not the only one to contribute to it. What I did was only a small part of the effort that went into making it possible. It was created with the help of Sarah Von Seggern, a German Translation professional and Michael Antipov, a Russian Translation worker, who gave assistance to me in so many ways - content development, proofreading, fact-checking and many other. Another professional, Roberto Garcia, who works in the field of Spanish Translation, also assisted in a variety of ways. I believe you will find Translation Is Ready interesting and useful in your translation teachings.

How are your discussions about food held when in class? Do you talk about disastrous attempts to make a special meal for an important event? Do you relish remembering the great homemade ravioli of your great-grandmother? Did something funny happen to a family member in a restaurant? Do you have your little jokes about how you all hated to eat the food, prepared by a relative because it tasted terrible?

Your first assignment is to write a story related to food. If you need some help thinking of one you may ask your classmates, friends and instructors to make suggestions. If you still find it difficult, share any kind of memory you have relating to food - maybe a special meal, or a special occasion.