French Menu Translation Puzzlers:

[John Talbott]

We have had discussions on translating the names of fish and péké, but little on strange menu puzzlers. My experience yesterday when Daniel Rose asked me to translate perdreau jarred my recollection of a wonderful article by Richard Pevear in the Times’ Book Review last week, discussing the translation of “tortue” and “grebeshki” in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. His tale of French turtle soup, a Paris restaurant and the Bibliotheque Nationale prompted me to start this topic on the strangest menu items we’ve faced translating.

For me, in France, I think it was a dish described as a zarzuela of vegetables, which sounded like a swirling soup of Southern European (eg Spanish/Basque) products, which it was.

[Daniel Rogov]

John, Hello...

Is not perdreau nothing more than a young partridge?

[John Talbott]

John, Hello...

Is not perdreau nothing more than a young partridge?

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Yup, but when a young American chef comes over to an old American couple and says "What's a perdreau?" one is amazed to come up with the correct answer (even though I think Colette produced it first).