Systematic Literature Review of Food-Related Translation From 2004 to 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1506.07Keywords:
food-related translation, methodological trends, research gaps, systematic literature review, translation studiesAbstract
Despite the wide recognition of food as an essential human necessity and cultural representation of a country in multiple disciplines, its exploration within translation studies remains under-researched. Therefore, a comprehensive review of food-related translation is vital. The current research systematically reviews previous studies on food-related translation in the past two decades (2004-2024) by searching relevant literature in two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. Through pre-defined screening criteria, along with analysis of titles, abstracts, keywords, and full papers (when necessary), 85 pertinent publications were identified and examined in terms of annual distribution, research types, research methods, textual types, and research contents. The main findings suggest that the academic interest in food translation initially peaked around 2015-2016, followed by a period of irregular fluctuations in publication volume, with a notable surge observed in the most recent three years (2022-2024). Furthermore, the results indicate a predominance of empirical research over non-empirical one, with qualitative research being dominant followed by mixed research. Additionally, the findings reveal that research into food-related translation spans a variety of textual types, ranging from early printed restaurant menus and literary texts to more contemporary genres such as audiovisual products, mobile applications, and video games, with a special focus on the exploration of translation strategies employed when rendering dish names from one language to another. This study contributes to the existing literature by identifying the research gaps and trends, as well as providing corresponding recommendations for future researchers to study food-related translation.
References
Abu-Rumman, R., Haider, A. S., Yagi, S., & Al-Adwan, A. (2023). A corpus-assisted cognitive analysis of metaphors in the Arabic subtitling of English TV series. Cogent Social Sciences, 9(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2023.2231622
Al-Batineh, M. (2023). The localization of food-and drink-related items in video games: The case of The Witcher 3 in Arabic. Digital Translation: International Journal of Translation and Localization, 10(1), 37-57. https://doi.org/10.1075/dt.22011.alb
Al-Batineh, M. (2024). Translation and localization of food menus on mobile delivery apps in the United Arab Emirates: A multimodal and reception study. Perspectives, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2024.2414273
Al-Rousan, F., & Haider, A. S. (2022). Dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: A case study of English and Arabic. Language Value, 15(2), 53-75. https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6922
Amenador, K. B., & Wang, Z. (2022). The translation of culture-specific items (CSIs) in Chinese-English food menu corpus: A study of strategies and factors. SAGE Open, 12(2), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440221096649
Amenador, K. B., & Wang, Z. (2023). The image of China as a destination for tourist: Translation strategies of culture-specific items in the Chinese-English food menus. SAGE Open, 13(3), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440231196656
Anderson, J. (2016). Strategies for strangeness: Crime fiction, translation and the mediation of ‘national’ cultures. The Translator, 22(2), 221-231. http://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2016.1184881
Borodo, M. (2019). “Mountains of Whipped Cream”, King Matt and the discursive presence of the translator. In J. Mianowski, M. Borodo, & P. Schreiber (Eds.), Memory, identity and cognition: Explorations in culture and communication (pp. 45-59). Springer.
Cavaliere, F. (2018). Food-related terms in audiovisual translation: A cross-cultural investigation. ESP Across Cultures, 15, 7-25. Retrieved January 1, 2025, https://edipuglia.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Cavaliere.pdf
Chen, W., Wu, C., & Cai, S. (2023). A study on implementing Sydney School Genre Pedagogy in teaching translation of instructional texts. World Journal of English Language, 13(6), 186-186. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n6p186
Chen, X., & Xie, W. W. (2024). Unveiling hybrid culinary cultures in Macao: A corpus-assisted multimodal approach to the translation of Macanese cuisine. Perspectives, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2024.2384930
Chiaro, D. (2008). A taste of otherness eating and thinking globally. European Journal of English Studies, 12(2), 195-209. https://doi.org/10.1080/13825570802151470
Chiaro, D., & Rossato, L. (2015). Food and translation, translation and food. The translator, 21(3), 237-243. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1110934
Cronin, M. (2015). The moveable feast: Translation, ecology and food. The Translator, 21(3), 244-256. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1103094
De Marco, A. (2015). Are green-lipped mussels really green? Touring New Zealand food in translation. The Translator, 21(3), 310-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1103098
Desjardins, R., Cooke, N., & Charron, M. (2015). Food and translation on the table: Exploring the relationships between food studies and translation studies in Canada. The Translator, 21(3), 257-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1103095
Farghal, M., Haider, A. S., & Abu Tair, S. (2023). Codeswitching in Arabic reality food competition shows through the lens of partial subtitling: A case study of the MENA adaptation of top chef. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 10(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2023.2259648
Feng, H. D. (2016). Quantitative methods in corpus-based translation studies: A practical guide to descriptive translation research. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 260-262. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2016.1210987
Gao, D. (2015). Translation characteristics of food science professional English. Carpathian Journal of Food Science and Technology, 7(1), 13-19. Retrieved January 1, 2025, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Translation+characteristics+of+food+science+professional+English&btnG=
Gao, Y., Li, L., & Lv, J. (2001). Trends in research methods in applied linguistics: China and the West. English for Specific Purposes, 20(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(99)00015-0
Gambier, Y., & Van-Doorslaer, L. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of translation studies (Vol. 4). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Garzone, G. (2017). Food, culture, language and translation. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 12(3), 214-221. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2017.1364255.
Gaspari, F. (2015). Exploring Expo Milano 2015: A cross-linguistic comparison of food-related phraseology in translation using a comparallel corpus approach. The Translator, 21(3), 327-349. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1103099
Ghafarian, M., Kafipour, R., & Soori, A. (2016). Domestication and foreignization strategies in restaurant menu translation. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 24(4), 1417-1429. Retrieved January 1, 2025, from http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/resources/files/Pertanika%20PAPERS/JSSH%20Vol.%2024%20(4)%20Dec.%202016/10%20JSSH-1420-2015.pdf
González-Vera, P. (2015). Food for thought: The translation of culinary references in animation. Íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 20(2), 247-264. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v20n2a07
Graziano, A. (2019). Learning second language through restaurant menu dish names. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 15(1), 67-82. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1567
Hagfors, I. (2003). The translation of culture-bound elements into Finnish in the post-war period. Meta: Translators’ Journal, 48(1), 115-127. https://doi.org/10.7202/006961ar
Haider, A. S., Alzghoul, O., & Hamdan, Y. (2023). Creating and experimenting a new parallel corpus of English-Arabic subtitles of culinary shows: A useful guide for translating food across cultures. World Journal of English Language, 13(8), 358-372. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n8p358
Henning, G. (1986). Quantitative methods in language acquisition research. TESOL Quarterly, 20(4), 701-708. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586520
Huet, M. (2024). It’s not all about the crime but it’s also about food: Translating references to French regional food in Fred Vargas’ Adamsberg novels. Perspectives, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2024.2384929
Inphen, W. (2024). Translated English food articles for a bilingual magazine in the urban context of Chiang Mai. Journal of Urban Culture Research, 28, 159-173. https://doi.org/10.14456/jucr.2024.7
Karas, H. (2022). Objects of remembrance and renewal: Translated materiality in Queen of Dreams. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 17(1), 111-133. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.21030.kar
Kou, G., & Liang, Y. (2022). A comparative study of multi-modal metaphors in food advertisements. Semiotica, 249, 275-291. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2020-0117
Lawson-Welsh, S. (2017). On the “not translated”: Rethinking translation and food in cross-cultural contexts: A response to “translation and food: The case of mestizo writers” by Ma Carmen Africa Vidal Claramonte and Pamela Faber. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 12(3), 205-213. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2017.1350361
Liao, R. R. (2015). Uighur local food in China and its English translation strategy. Advance Journal of Food Science and Technology, 9(1), 76-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.19026/ajfst.9.1937
Li, M. (2020). A systematic review of the research on Chinese character teaching and learning. Frontiers of Education in China, 15(1), 39-72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11516-020-0003-y
Lim, L. (2018). A corpus-based study of braised dishes in Chinese-English menus. In Proceedings of the 32nd Pacific Asia conference on language, information and computation: 25th joint workshop on linguistics and language processing, 887-892. Retrieved January 1, 2025, from https://aclanthology.org/Y18-2005.pdf
Li, S. H. (2019). A corpus-based multimodal approach to the translation of restaurant menus. Perspectives, 27(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2018.1483408
Li, S., Li, Q., & Hope, W. (2022). Translating (and rewriting) Jane Austen’s food across time and space. Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 9(2), 201-216. https://doi.org/10.1080/23306343.2022.2106068
Marco, J. (2019). The translation of food-related culture-specific items in the Valencian corpus of translated literature (COVALT) corpus: A study of techniques and factors. Perspectives, 27(1), 20–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2018.1449228
Minutella, V. (2023). Cupcakes, marshmallows and muffins: The translation of food cultural references in animated films in Italy. RiCOGNIZIONI. Rivista di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne, 10(20), 127-142. https://doi.org/10.13135/2384-8987/8593
Möhring, M. (2024). From Berlin to the globe: The transnational story of Döner Kebab. In A. Arkilic, & B. Senay (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Turkey’s Diasporas (pp. 446-458). Routledge.
Monti, S. (2019). What’s cooking in multicultural films? Food, language and identity in British and American audiovisual products and their Italian dubbed version. In M. P. L. de Heredia, & I. H. Andino (Eds.), Multilingüismo y representación de las identidades en textos audiovisuales [Multilingualism and representation of identities in audiovisual texts] (pp. 199-228). https://doi.org/10.6035/MonTI.2019.ne4.7
Oster, U., & Molés-Cases, T. (2016). Eating and drinking seen through translation: A study of food-related translation difficulties and techniques in a parallel corpus of literary texts. Across Languages and Cultures, 17(1), 53-75. https://doi.org/10.1556/084.2016.17.1.3
Panou, D. (2022). Possibilising food translation in children’s literature: With a focus on Greek translations of Captain Underpants. Babel, 68(6), 890-912. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00294.pan
Petronienė, S., Murauskaitė, J., & Horbačauskienė, J. (2019). Translation of culture-specific items in menus. In A. Olteanu, A. Stables, & D. Borţun (Eds.), Meanings & Co.: The interdisciplinarity of communication, semiotics and multimodality (Vol. 6, pp. 181-192). Springer.
Pratama, A. D. Y. (2023). Balinese food menu in translation. Journal of Bali Studies, 13(1), 64-83. https://doi.org/10.24843/JKB.2023.v13.i01.p04
Rossato, L. (2015). Le grand culinary tour: Adaptation and retranslation of a gastronomic journey across languages and food cultures. The Translator, 21(3), 271-295. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2015.1103096
Ruzaitė, J. (2006). Text typology in translation: A case study of menu translations. Darbai ir dienos, 45, 257-271. https://doi.org/10.7220/2335-8769.45.17
Saldanha, G., & O’Brien, S. (2014). Research methodologies in translation studies. Routledge.
Shmiher, T., & Naniak, Y. (2023). Food as cultural symbol: The case study of Francois Rabelais’s Gargantua Et Pantagruel and its Ukrainian translations. Romanica Cracoviensia, 23(2), 127-134. https://doi.org/10.4467/20843917RC.23.013.18399
Siu, S. C. (2024). Revolutionising translation with AI: Unravelling neural machine translation and generative pre-trained large language models. In P. Yuhong, Huang. Huihui, & Li. Defeng (Eds.), New advances in translation technology: Applications and pedagogy (pp. 29-54). Springer Nature.
Steinhardt, I., Schneijderberg, C., Götze, N., Baumann, J., & Krücken, G. (2017). Mapping the quality assurance of teaching and learning in higher education: The emergence of a specialty? Higher Education, 74(2), 221-237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0045-5
Sulaiman, M. Z. (2016). Translating Australian urban gastronomic experiences for Malay tourists. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 24, 21-36. Retrieved January 1, 2025, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohamed-Sulaiman-2/publication/303577185_Translating_Australian_urban_gastronomic_experiences_for_Malay_tourists/links/5c00876b299bf1a3c15616a9/Translating-Australian-urban-gastronomic-experiences-for-Malay-tourists.pdf
Vidal-Claramonte, M. Á. (2024). Not translating food as a political statement: The case of Najat El Hachmi. Perspectives, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2024.2379496
Vidal-Claramonte, M. Á., & Faber, P. (2017). Translation and food: The case of mestizo writers. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 12(3), 189-204. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2017.1339352
Wang, L. (2022). Reframing narratives for corporate identities in the translation of corporate profiles in China multinational corporations [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Wang, L., Ang, L. H., & Halim, H. A. (2020). A systematic literature review of narrative analysis in recent translation studies. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 28(1), 1-16. Retrieved January 1, 2025, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=A+systematic+literature+review+of+narrative+analysis+in+recent+translation+studies.&btnG=
Yang, J. (2015). Cultural implications of food labeling translation from the view of advertising aesthetics. Carpathian Journal of Food Science and Technology, 7(1), 44-48. Retrieved January 1, 2025, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Cultural+implications+of+food+labeling+translation+from+the+view+of+advertising+aesthetics&btnG=
Yu, X. M., & Geng, Q. (2018). Shi jue wen ben fan yi yan jiu: li lun, wen ti yu yu fang fa [Studies of visual texts translation: Theories, problematics and methods]. Wai yu yu wai yu jiao xue, 3, 77-87.
