Lost in Translation
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Here’s a mix of morality tale, love of food, and
concern for correct language that could only happen in France. A group
of French chefs, writers, an eminent yachtsman, and a member of the
Académie Française have petitioned Pope Paul II to remove gourmandise
from the list of the seven deadly sins. The group is headed by the
daughter of a master baker, Lionel Poilâne, who died tragically in a
helicopter accident last year. Before his untimely demise, he had
campaigned vigorously for the replacement of gourmandise with the more
appropriate and accurately translated gloutonnerie (literally,
“gluttony”) on the Church’s official list of capital sins.
I
believe I would not be misstating when I say that M Poilâne, as a food
professional and celebrator of la bonne bouffe and the spirit of
sharing and conviviality that goes with it in France, was hurt,
offended, and probably outraged by the Church’s placing of this very
spirit on its list of deadly sins. After all, you could say that
M Poilâne made a vibrant career out of his own gourmandise, and helped
countless people develop their own sense of gourmandise through the
dégustation of his delicious, sourdough, whole-grain,
wood-fired-oven-baked breads. In fact, M Poilane did more than
any other individual to return France to its “bread roots” by reviving
the traditional country loaf, which had fallen into neglect in favor of
an industrially produced, characterless white baguette. How did he do
this? By reawakening people’s innate gourmandise for really good,
toothsome bread.
I don’t think the Church truly intends for
gourmandise to be a deadly sin, either. It’s all a misunderstanding due
to a mistranslation that happened… oh, I don’t know- centuries ago.
Perhaps when the seven deadly sins were first translated from Latin
into French. Actually, I find this mistranslation rather shockingly
inaccurate, and I’m amazed it was allowed to persist this long without
a challenge. For in fact, gourmandise is one of those uniquely French
words that defies translation, at least into English. There simply is
no single, simple, pat word that means in English what gourmandise
means in French.
The problem is that French-English
dictionaries unanimously cop out of this difficulty by translating
gourmandise as “gluttony.” What’s more, my Larousse Dictionnaire de la
Langue Française then goes on to state as an exemplary phrase for the
usage of gourmandise. La gourmandise est un des péchés capitaux.
(Gourmandise is one of the capital sins.) When I turn to the
French-English side of my Dictionnaire Hachette Oxford, I find this
phrase parroted in English. All of this just goes to show to what a
profound extent poor old innocent gourmandise has been slandered and
maligned by mistranslation into a deadly sin, and to what extent this
mistranslation has backfired to muddy the true meaning of the word even
in its own country!
okay, you’re probably thinking, “Then just what does gourmandise really
mean?” If I were writing the dictionaries, I would translate
gourmandise as “love of food,” with strong connotations of sharing and
conviviality around a table. In fact, gourmet and gourmand probably
have the same root. Gourmet– uniformly and tautologically translated
as gourmet in French-English dictionaries-means someone with a refined
palate, capable of distinguishing good from bad food and wines. But if
someone tells you in French that she is a gourmande de fromage, she
means she is a cheese-lover, not a glutton or a greedy pig. A gourmand
is someone who loves food and, well, isn’t afraid to eat it. I wouldn’t
call that a sin, would you?
As an unabashed gourmande of both
good food and good language, I heartily applaud the late M Poilane’s
campaign to reclassify the capital sin of gourmandise into the more
appropriate gloutonnerie. Surely that’s a more direct translation of
Pope Gregory I’s “gluttony”, as when he first decreed the Seven Sins at
the end of the sixth century. To persist in translating the sin of
gluttony as gourmandise is like decreeing most French people–and
probably most of us who love to visit France–sinners a priori. To M
Poilane’s daughter and her delegation who are trying to set the record
straight, I say, “Bravo, et bon courage!