Machine translation: 01 (Slovak to English) (London)

A Slovakian ex-student’s mother had come to London to visit him for a week.  He had a full-time job, so I offered to spend time with her.  She teaches cooking back home in Slovakia, so I thought I could cook her some simple stir-fried dishes to demonstrate how simple and versatile stir-frying is, as practically any permutation is possible.  

In addition to the practical demonstration, I thought I’d also tell her about some basic principles: the different ways of cutting up the ingredients (e.g., cutting across the grain, apart from the obvious slicing, dicing, etc.), when to add which ingredients to the wok (e.g., crunchy bits first to cook longer, leafy bits at the end for a short blast), the food therapy properties of the ingredients (e.g., wood ear for cholesterol).

Since I only know three words of Slovak (“hello”, “yes”, and “thank you”) and Emilia’s English is lower beginner level, communication was not easy.  It then struck me that I could use my laptop and call up googletranslate in two windows: one for English to Slovak, and one for Slovak to English.  It’s not ideal, but would get a lot more across.

As Central Europeans are known for their foraging, I thought I’d teach her some dishes involving dried mushrooms and dried wood ear*, which are two common ingredients in Chinese cooking.  Surprisingly, she’d never heard of wood ear (which is a tree fungus), and did not recognise it when I showed her some.  So, I thought I’d start by telling her what it’s called: 木耳 mù’ěr (“wood ear”) in Chinese, Jew’s ear** in English.

The googletranslate conversation continued with Emilia asking questions: how long to soak the dried Jew’s ear for, how to cook it, what other ingredients to use with it, etc..  At one point, googletranslate showed up “dried synagogue” in English!

*木耳 mù’ěr, Auricularia auricula, family Auriculariaceae

**[from my Apple Mac built-in dictionary] Auricularia auricula-judae, family Auriculariaceae, class Hymenomycetes.  ORIGIN: mid 16th cent.: a mistranslation of medieval Latin auricula Judae ‘Judas's ear’, from its shape, and because it grows on the elder, which was said to be the tree from which Judas Iscariot hanged himself.

(London, 2012)