Le grand culinary tour: adaptation and retranslation of a gastronomic journey across languages and food cultures

Abstract

Through an examination of British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s cookery TV series Jamie’s Great Italian Escape (Fresh One Productions, Channel 4, 2005), and comparing the original version to the Italian subtitled version of the show this article sets out to investigate a case of cultural translation in which Italian cuisine is adapted for a UK TV audience and then retranslated for the Italian audience whose dishes were originally the source of inspiration for the programme. To provide control parameters, the article also considers a few key passages from the original cookbook accompanying the TV series and contrasts them to the Italian translation. The article will address in particular the topic of how culture-specific contents of the Italian culinary tradition are adapted for UK audiences and readership and how they are then conveyed back via subtitles and written translation to the Italian speaking viewers/readers, who do not share the cultural and the linguistic background of the source text recipients, yet are very familiar with the cultural contents presented in the show. The article argues that power structures between a centre and a periphery of the media industry are relevant for the success and reception of cookery programmes and of their translations. As Italian food culture is presented to the world via a UK perspective, one further line of argument of the article is that this might influence how Italian culinary tradition is perceived by the rest of the world. The article argues that unveiling the power dynamics involved in what is usually considered material for Television Studies or Cultural Studies may have important implications for Translation Studies as well.

Keywords:

• TV cookery shows
• screen translation
• cultural adaptation
• food and cookery specialty channels
• Jamie Oliver
• Italian food culture

Notes

1. The switchover from analogue to digital terrestrial broadcasting took place in Germany between 2002 and 2008, in the Netherlands in 2007, in the UK between 2008 and 2012 and in Italy between 2011 and 2012.

2. ‘The 10 most influential British cookery shows.’ Telegraph.co.uk Available at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10394111/The-10-most-influential-British-cookery-shows.html?mobile=basic>. Last accessed March 16 2015.

3. Ibidem

4. Italian term for local food festival.

5. Retrieved from <http://www.jamieoliver.com/> last accessed November 13 2007.

6. For example some cookbooks by Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay were translated into Italian.

7. At time of writing, a rerun of the six part travelogue is being scheduled by laeffe an Italian lifestyle DTT channel.

8. The magazine is available in paper version at the newsagents’ and is online at: < http://www.jamiemagazine.it/it>- Retrieved July 4th, 2015.

9. Available at: http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/News/1.2217049. Retrieved August 20th, 2015.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Rossato

Linda Rossato is post-doctoral research assistant at the Department of Interpreting and Translation of the University of Bologna. After graduating in translation from the University of Bologna, from which she also received a Master’s degree in Audiovisual Translation, she obtained her Ph.D. in English for Special Purposes in 2010, from the University of Naples Federico II, with a dissertation on The Discourse of British TV Cookery. She holds a research fellowship at the University of Bologna on: The “voice” of Italian Migrants to the UK. She is also part of the research group InMedioPueri of the University of Bologna, studying child language brokering in Italy. Her publications revolve around audiovisual translation, humour studies, food and cultural studies, as well as child language brokering.