Abstract

Abstract This article explores the theme of food translation, based on research conducted in Italy in 2018 with a group of asylum seekers from different West African countries. It concentrates on a community gardening project revolving around the cultivation of okra: a vegetable that is a staple in many African cuisines, but not very popular in Italy, which provided the occasion for the participants to communicate their home foodways. As something that is linked to the most basic human needs, and yet bears high cultural significance, food can be used as a lens to explore the shifting relationship between language and other embodied forms of meaning. Translating food means engaging with a complex interplay of language, sensory experiences, and socio-cultural norms. Drawing from recent semiotically-oriented developments in translation studies as well as applied linguistics, and the semiotics of food, I analyze key participants’ involvement with the project.

Highlights

  • Food is a crucial factor in human well-being, and an immediate signifier of cultural belonging in contexts of migration

  • This article explores the role that food translation had for a group of asylum seekers who were involved in a community gardening project with the NonGovernmental Organisation Tamat in 2018 in Perugia (Italy)

  • How does the meaning of food shift as it moves both from the embodied semiosis of smell and flavour into the linguistic realm, and – only – from language to language? As migrants and refugees move around, encountering new foodways and bringing their old foodways with them, looking at food in translation helps us understand the politics of hospitality

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Summary

Introduction

Food is a crucial factor in human well-being, and an immediate signifier of cultural belonging in contexts of migration. ‘Translating food’ means confronting a complex interplay of language(s), sensory experience, and socio-cultural norms, to be rendered in a different language or mode of communication. The article analyses interactions between asylum seekers and social workers in the field, as well as an interview with key participants It looks at how participants developed strategies to translate food-related meaning from their background; and in so doing, evolve their relationship with social workers and other residents. The different strategies that emerged showed how the strategies for translating migrant food relate to different semiotic systems, and to relations of power that exist between ‘guests’ and ‘hosts’ in a community

Translation and refugee integration
Translating food
The Italian refugee hospitality program
Context for this study
A note on okra in Italy
In the field
In the market
Conclusions

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