Food in the works of Jane Austen as seen by early 20th-century Chinese
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"How Jane Austen’s Early Chinese Translators Were Stumped by the Oddities of 19th-Century British Cuisine: How do you get a reader in 1930s China to understand what a mince pie is?" By Saihong Li and William Hope, The Conversation (9/15/22) / Get Pocket.
Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) works are globally renowned, but they were unknown in China until 1935 when two different translations of Pride and Prejudice were published. Today, her novels are increasingly popular and have been translated into Chinese many times – notably there have been 60 different retranslations of Pride and Prejudice.
Translators face the creative balancing act of remaining faithful to the source text while also ensuring that the translation is a smooth, informative read. One intriguing task for translators of Austen has been how to describe the 19th-century British food featured in the many convivial sequences that shed light on characters through their social interaction.
How do you get an early Chinese reader of Austen’s work in the 1930s to understand what rout-cakes are and why Mrs Elton in Austen’s Emma considers poor versions of these a sign of a bad host? The world was not as globalised as it is now and information not so accessible.
Nothing could be simpler and more routine in English cooking / baking than pies. We have mince pie, shepherd's pie, steak and kidney pie, meat pie, and so on and on and on, not to mention humble pie, and what would Chinese of any age make of "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pye"? And Little Jack Horner sitting in a corner eating a Christmas pie, into which he sticks his thumb and pulls out a plum? Mostly when Chinese talk about "pie" they use the word "bǐng 餅", which could be flat cake, pancake, cookie, pastry, biscuit,
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennett contrasts her girls’ upbringing with that of their neighbour, Charlotte Lucas, who assists in cooking “the mince pies”. The notion of a pastry dish containing fruit, meat or vegetables is difficult to convey in Chinese as there are only limited similarities with Chinese “bĭng” which are wheat flour-based items resembling flatbreads, biscuits, or pancakes.
Although early mince pies contained meat, they became sweeter and more fruit-based in the 18th century as sugar imports increased. However, Chinese translators conveyed “mince pies” in different ways, including “steak”, “steamed bun”, and “meat pie”, revealing translation errors or strategies such as the use of Chinese equivalents.
The two wartime translations, made during Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945 of “mince pie” were “steak” and “steamed bun” but in mitigated circumstance the translators probably had limited access to dictionaries during this period.
The article touches on many other types of food in Jane Austen's time and describes the challenges they posed to 20th-century translators who strove to render them into Chinese. For example, "brawn", which is "a cold cut terrine or meat jelly made from a pig’s head and bones, spiced, boiled, then cooled."
Translation strategies have grown ever more sophisticated in recent decades, for example:
“Happiness pancakes” are small, round, and made of flour, sesame seed and white sugar. They display a motif signifying happiness and are decorated with red silk. They have been a wedding delicacy for 2,000 years, whereas western-style wedding cakes are relatively new to China. Nevertheless, the newly coined, cosmopolitan concept of “jiéhūn dàngāo” (“wedding cake”) has materialised in recent translations.
Ah, but then comes cheese, for which the Chinese are hard pressed to find even one term to match the hundreds of English terms. They have tried this and that kind of lào 酪 ("junket; curds"):
Unknown. Possibly from a Central Asian language; compare Mongolian айраг (ajrag, “fermented milk of mares”), Uzbek pishloq (“cheese”) and Turkish ayran (“yoghurt mixed with water”). The phonetic similarity between Chinese 酪 (OC *ɡ·raːɡ, “milk”), Ancient Greek γάλα (gála, “milk”) and Latin lac (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵlákts (“milk”) is worth noting (Schuessler, 2007).
"Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19) — very long post directly related to the question of what lào, luò 酪 ("fermented milk; yoghurt; sour milk; kumiss") is
Li and Hope opine:
The diets of British and Chinese people are differentiated by foods such as cheese. Austen periodically mentions cheese, for example in Emma when Mr Elton describes a party with “the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root and all the dessert”. Such references are problematic for Chinese translators because of cultural differences.
…
Although several translators attempted to evoke Stilton’s characteristics (such as its “dry” texture) and used transliteration to convey something of original place names (“North Wiltshire” becoming “North Wēněrtè”, for example), most Chinese readers would have been none the wiser compared with a British reader’s understanding of the original text.
Translation is hard, and probably no aspect of it is harder than conveying the taste, texture, flavor, etc. of food, no matter which language you're translating from and which language you're translating into.
What is mouthfeel in contemporary English? Al dente in Italian? QQ in Taiwanese? If you know the nuances of such terms, you are a gourmand gourmet.
Selected readings
- "FOOD & BGVERAGGS, with a focus on naan / nang" (2/12/16) — displaying much food erudition
- "Lactase and language: the spread of the Yamnaya" (7/16/20)
[Thanks to Mark and Greg Metcalf]
Philip Taylor said,
July 12, 2024 @ 6:34 am
"How do you get an early Chinese reader of Austen’s work in the 1930s to understand what rout-cakes are ?". I am not convinced that most Britons would know what a rout-cake is today — I certainly didn't, until I looked it up following this post. On the other hand, "What is mouthfeel in contemporary English ?" — "mouth feel" : an (almost) everyday phrase, if one is discussing food.
Victor Mair said,
July 12, 2024 @ 6:41 am
But how do you say it in Chinese? I can think of two ways to say it in Mandarin, but I doubt that many Chinese would know them.
Philip Taylor said,
July 12, 2024 @ 7:10 am
Ah, now that is a different question (or else I misunderstood the original post). I don't know, so I will ask a Chinese friend …
John Swindle said,
July 12, 2024 @ 8:08 am
Much more on "mouthfeel":
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=29140
Philip Taylor said,
July 12, 2024 @ 9:52 am
Zhou Rui (Shanghainese, roughly 37, fluent in both Shanghainese and Mandarin) said —
Victor Mair said,
July 12, 2024 @ 9:59 am
Thank you, John Swindle. That is indeed a thorough treatment and discussion of the relatively recent term kǒugǎn 口感 ("mouthfeel") — 112,000,000 ghits. Philip Taylor should read it.
The other expression I have privately used as a neologism for "mouthfeel", and subsequently found that others sometimes use it too, is kǒujué 口覺 — 460 ghits. More often, it seems, though, that people mean by it "oral sense / sensation".
JimG said,
July 12, 2024 @ 10:14 am
Chinese cuisine's best analog for an anglosaxon filled pie is probably the egg custard tart, a borrowed food from the Portuguese. I'd be surprised if the Chinese translators couldn't express "finely chopped fruit, spices and suet".
Gregory Kusnick said,
July 12, 2024 @ 11:04 am
"in mitigated circumstance" strikes me as an odd turn of phrase here. In context it seems to mean something like "in their defense" or "to be fair". Could this be a translation of some stock Chinese phrase?
Pamela said,
July 12, 2024 @ 1:06 pm
Wonderful article. I recently had occasion to see some of Ulysses S. Grant's account of his tour of China (during his world tour of 1877-1879), and his horror of Chinese food. He specifically complained of the fact that Chinese food was chopped into tiny pieces (I don't recall him saying it was "minced," though I wonder why not). He seemed to think (without saying in so many words) that the unrecognizability of chopped food meant that literally anything could have been put in there, and the eater would be none the wiser. It struck me when reading this that Victorians (I think in Britain and the USA) did seem to have a preference, in their meat, for whole creatures–they put pigs, turkeys, geese, chickens, rabbits, right on the table (cooked), as if that was the only way to be sure that it was what it was. They were so enamored of this that still life tableaux of carcasses on serving dishes became an important part of oil painting, magazine illustrations, wall paper decoration, etc. (And yes, whole creatures speak of abundance, since their entirety tells the story, where mincing can make a tiny bit go a long way). This being their habit, I am now curious about this idea of pies, since in principle pies are at the opposite end of the visible food spectrum–in fact in popular culture there is a persistent theme, between comedy and horror, of people not really knowing what is in pies (till it is too late). I am thinking that in this sense pies and stuffed pastries have a very distinctive cultural profile, primarily subversive, and certainly playing on Grant's idea of the essential fears/enticements of mincing–reducing meat to unrcognizable bits (and just imagine how this extends to modern processed meats, which as "baloney" and "spam" we universally deride as inauthentic). I don't have any idea whether there is a counterpart in Chinese cultural history–themes of cannibalism or poisoning being screened by stuffed pastries (or soups) or just the gooey slivers of things that Grant so feared.
Victor Mair said,
July 12, 2024 @ 1:51 pm
"How to make rout cakes for your rout", The Regency Cook (13th June 2022), with a risqué period drawing and a practical recipe.
https://paulcouchman.co.uk/how-to-make-a-rout-cake-for-your-rout/
David Marjanović said,
July 12, 2024 @ 3:09 pm
Isn't BrEng mince(d )meat = AmEng ground meat?
AntC said,
July 12, 2024 @ 3:42 pm
It's not clear to me Li & Hope are aware that to this day there are two distinct forms of 'mince pie'/'mincemeat': one in sweet pastry filled with minced fruit (appears around Christmas); one in savoury pastry (suet-based) filled with minced emm meat. (Indeed complaint might be made the latter's filling is not so much meat as dubious offcuts from the animal.)
"steamed bun"/baozi 包子 seems a reasonable cultural approximation, again either sweet or savoury. (The way baozi are kept warm for hours in glass cabinets at hawker stalls is culturally very comparable to a 'pie shop'.) There's also dumplings.
Ok steamed or boiled isn't the same as baked/flakey pastry. But the idea's close enough(?)
AntC said,
July 12, 2024 @ 4:47 pm
@DM Isn't BrEng mince(d )meat = AmEng ground meat?
Ah, yes true. My immediately following post used BrEng 'mince(d)'. And the fruit to get minced is usually candied/dried, thus needing the addition of significant quantities of rum/brandy to make it 'moist'.
M. Paul Shore said,
July 12, 2024 @ 6:24 pm
I have some potential sympathy for Grant’s feelings, since although my experience with Chinese restaurants in China is limited—my total time in the country is only about three weeks—I did notice a tendency in at least some restaurants to cut up non-inner-organ animal tissue with apparent complete disregard for the specific type of tissue being cut through, so that any small piece might be a mixture of meat, fat, bone, skin, tendon, and/or various other things. (The culinary equivalent of what linguists call “class cleavage”!) I’ve observed the same thing, though less seriously and less frequently, in the occasional stateside Chinese restaurant. Speaking just for myself, I’m bothered by this whether in Western or Asian food, because if I can’t carefully cut away everything other than pure meat, I’d rather not eat a meat dish at all. (My sisters, watching me, used to say I should become a surgeon.) Moreover, Grant’s concern about (relative) purity of meat products was shared by many of his contemporaries— this was in the period leading up to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, after all—which is one reason it took the American public a while to view hot dogs and hamburgers as universally acceptable foods. In 2024, I remain bothered by the little bits of bone, fat, and so on that turn up in nearly all meat that’s been ground, cubed, shredded, or whatever. Other people don’t seem to mind, though, so maybe I’m just eccentric in that way.
RfP said,
July 12, 2024 @ 7:02 pm
@ David M & AntC
Mince pie is well-known in at least some circles in the U.S., although mainly the sweet kind. And mostly in connection with wintry holidays.
Likewise, the expression “mincemeat”—even if in day-to-day use we put “ground beef” in our burgers (or ground lamb, chicken, etc.). And I suppose our knowledge of the term is at least in part due to the expression “to make mincemeat of” someone or something.
But my dad, who had a fairly conventional Midwestern upbringing in pre-WWII America, would jokingly ask from time to time when we were kids, “What are you? A spy for the mint? A mint spy?”
RfP said,
July 12, 2024 @ 7:20 pm
P.S. And we certainly mince onions and garlic over here—but I guess mostly veggies, now that I think about it.
In my experience, mincing seems to be something Americans do by hand with a sharp knife, as opposed to using the steel or cast iron (?) grinder that most people would use to prepare sausage or ground meat.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
July 12, 2024 @ 7:49 pm
I am not sure American readers always grasp the nuances of Austen’s cookery details. Mince, for instance, is not at all like American mincemeat. British meat pies are much different than American pot pies with meat fillings.
American pastry used for pie crusts is, at its best, light and flaky rather than thick and dense. It’s used mostly for fruit, custard, or other sweet fillings, including mincemeat. American mincemeat includes ground beef in the traditional version, along with fruit and sweet ingredients. (Canned mincemeat from grocery stores often does not have any beef.)
American pot pies made with pastry (as opposed to the soup “pot pie” made with noodles in Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish cuisines) are most often made with boned, diced chicken or turkey, along with onion, peas, chopped celery, minced carrot, and gravy inside a two-crust pie or in a casserole dish with a top crust only. Frozen pot pies are commonly sold in grocery stores in the U.S. and are often single-serving sized,
British meat pies are much different. Articles I have read explain the crust is designed to be a study container that allows the contents to steam (as opposed to roasting or baking), whereas American fruit pies will have vents cut in the top crust to allow moisture to escape, contributing to the thickening of the fruit filling while adding a decorative touch.
AntC said,
July 12, 2024 @ 9:45 pm
the crust is designed to be a study container that allows the contents to steam (as opposed to roasting or baking),
That's what I'd call a 'stand pie'. Oxford dictionary has
Wiktionary says "made for sharing": I could recommend a very particular pork butcher whose stand pies I absolutely wouldn't share and would insist on eating the crust. The trick is to get the meat juices to soak into the crust.
Michael Vnuk said,
July 12, 2024 @ 10:03 pm
It’s not only Chinese translators who had difficulties with Jane Austen’s foods. Although I haven’t read any Austen, I’ve read some other authors of the time, and I’ve been uncertain about what particular foods were and their cultural significance.
The words ‘Jane Austen’ and ‘food’ reminded me of a book that I have: ‘What Jane Austen ate and Charles Dickens knew: from fox hunting to whist – the facts of daily life in nineteenth-century England’ by Daniel Pool (1993). I see from the inside that I bought it in December 1996, but I never got around to reading it. Pool discusses numerous topics such as money, schools, furniture, dancing, clothes, health, maids, titles and wills across about 250 pages, followed by a glossary of nearly 150 pages. I’ll have to add it to my reading pile. I note, however, that it does not include ‘rout-cake’.
/df said,
July 14, 2024 @ 7:08 am
The pastry for a stand pie, perhaps filled with pork or game and topped up with knuckle jelly, is made with, typically, lard and hot water, a quite magical process when you get it right.
Formerly, a less toothsome pastry enclosure might have been used more as an effective packing to enable the contents to survive a rut-ridden coach journey. That may be what the "Northern Historians" meant.
Shop-bought sweet "mincemeat" in the UK eschews actual meat and most Brits would be surprised or disgusted or both if it was revealed to them that the especially juicy "mince pie" they had been served contained minced steak. This medieval tradition apparently, according to @Barbara Phillips Long, has persisted in America like the pronunciation of words like derby, herb and route.
Philip Taylor said,
July 14, 2024 @ 12:36 pm
"The pastry for a stand pie, perhaps filled with pork or game and topped up with knuckle jelly, is made with, typically, lard and hot water, a quite magical process when you get it right" — more than magical, I would call it miraculous — your recipe omits any mention of flour !
HS said,
July 14, 2024 @ 8:24 pm
Small mince (i.e. minced meat) pies are completely ubiquitous in New Zealand and Australia as a takeaway snack. They can be found in virtually any bakery, cafe, dairy (the New Zealand term for a small corner store) or petrol station. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_pie_(Australia_and_New_Zealand) . They are roughly the New Zealand / Australian equivalent of burgers or hotdogs in America as a takeaway food (although of course we have burgers and hotdogs as well). As that Wikipedia article notes, they could almost be regarded as the national dish of both New Zealand and Australia. It is virtually impossible for me as a New Zealander to imagine going to a football match or cricket match without having a mince pie (or two, or three), or going on a tramp (the New Zealand term for a hike) without stopping off on the way home to "grab a pie".
As AntC notes, "mince pie" can also refer to something quite different – a pie made of sweet pastry filled with sweet minced fruit that typically appears around Christmas time. (AntC is referring to Britain, I think, but exactly the same thing is true in New Zealand.) But to me, and I would think to virtually any New Zealander, the term "mince pie" by default refers to a takeaway mince meat pie. I remember as a child being puzzled and disappointed for years that at Christmas there would be "mince pies" and they weren't mince at all! I felt completely cheated! It took me years to finally realise that in this case the "mince" referred to minced fruit (which I dislike). "Mince" in New Zealand by default refers to mince(d) beef, and a "mince pie" (never "minced pie") by default refers to a minced beef pie (though a cynic might suggest that in certain cheaper brands of commercial mince pies it actually refers to minced horses' hooves and gristle…). You can also get numerous other flavours of takeaway pie in New Zealand, such minced chicken or minced lamb, but these would normally just be referred to as "chicken pies" or "lamb pies" without the "minced".
As AntC suggests, I think "steamed bun" would be a reasonable Chinese cultural approximation for the New Zealand takeaway meat pie, though I somehow doubt that the New Zealand takeaway meat pie was quite what Jane Austen had in mind when she referred to "minced pies".