Let’s preserve our identity: building a Portuguese – English glossary of typical Brazilian cooking ingredients

Stella E. O. Tagnin (University of São Paulo)Elisa D. Teixeira (CoMET Project)

UCCTS 2010 - Ormskirk, July 2010

To start with...

How many Brazilian dishes or ingredients do you know?

Name a few...

Brazilian cuisine

The cuisine of a nation reflects its culture(s)

Brazil is a huge country, has many cuisines: regional / national

Brazilian dishes - less known than Latin American• Portuguese language

barrier?

Brazilian cuisine

Brazilian cooking is arousing the interest of international chefs:

“When people ask me which countries are the future of cooking, I always answer China and Brazil. I think the creative and joyful way of understanding life, combined with unique ingredients,

will make Brazil an important country for the future of gastronomy”

(Ferràn Adrià, in the preface of Por uma Gastronomia Brasileira, by Alex Atala, 2003 – our translation)

“It’s high time for Brazil to also export its own recipes, and to disseminate Brazilian gastronomy throughout the world”

(Paulo Salmucci, president of Abrasel, in NERY, 2006: 49 – our translation)

Brazilian cuisine

• Tourism– one of Brazil’s main sources of income–World Cup 2014–Olympic Games 2016

• Gastronomy– largest profit share within Tourism– a wealth of cooking schools and colleges has

sprouted in the last few yearstourists must eat, but... menus are sometimes difficult

to understand, when not scary

Pitiful translations

Menus

• Filé bovino, fritas, vinagrete e farofa = Steak Bull, fries, vinegar and farofa

• Suculentos espetinhos com farofa, fritas e vinagrete

= Delicious sticks with mix flour, fries and vinegar

• Filé ao molho Madeira, fritas, arroz à grega e salada verde

= Steak with wood sauce, fries, greak rice and green salad

• ...nobre corte de contrafilé = nobleman cuts of against filet

• CREME RACHEL = IT CREMATES RACHEL

machine translation?!

Inconsistency

Cachaça is translated in Embratur texts as:• cachaça (sugar(-)cane rum) • cachaça (typical Brazilian sugar cane rum) • cachaça (rum)• sugar cane spirit• sugar cane rum

Legal problem:• Itamaraty wants to create a special Customs category for

cachaça taxes for rum are higher

Our Brazilian Cooking project

• Aim• Methodology• Glossary model

The CoMET Project

CoMET research group – since 1998• Multiligual Corpus for Teaching and Translation• Postgraduate students and independent researchers • Department of English, University of São Paulo

Freely available corpora• CorTec – Technical Corpus• CorTrad – Parallel Translation Corpus• CoMAprend – Learner Corpus

The Brazilian Cooking project

Aim• Disseminate Brazilian gastronomic culture to the English-

speaking world• Protect authentic Brazilian cuisine, its traditional ingredients,

methods and dishes

Product• Portuguese-English Glossary of Brazilian Ingredients and

Dishes• Freely available on the internet

The project

Target audience: all those who may need to write texts about Brazilian Cuisine• Language industry professionals: translators in general; food

writers; journalists; language teachers

• Food and beverage industry professionals: bilingual menu writers, caterers, etc. in restaurants, hotel chains, national and regional professional unions;

• Food and beverage industry students and instructors

• Official and non-official Tourism organizations

The project

Three-level entry:

1. Equivalent (or reproduction of the original term for lack of equivalent) Ex: coco = coconut; vatapá = vatapá

2. Brief description, which may be inserted in a translated text or in menus Ex: vatapá: Brazilian seafood stew with creamy coconut milk

3. Encyclopedic explanation, with photo, where possible, detailed description of the ingredient (physical and organoleptic characteristics, links to sites with more information) or dish (ingredients, method, links to recipes)

Corpus Linguistics Methodology

Corpus compilation• Collecting texts• Corpus balancing• Preparing texts – cleaning, organizing, tagging, renaming

Term extraction: Keywords Writing the entries using e-Termos– Web-based collaborative platform for terminological

products Reviewing and publishing the final product

Corpus compilation

Initial plan• Collect texts by geographic regions• Concentrate on Northeast region – main tourist

destination• Problem: overlapping recipes / ingredients• World Cup to be held in different cities.

Updated plan• Include recipes and descriptive texts for all regions• Comparable and parallel texts

Corpus compilation

Comparable corpus so far• English

8 digitalized U.S. cookbooks of Brazilian cuisineTexts collected from websites (such as: Foodlexicon; foodtv;

recipehound; cookingBrazil)• Portuguese

1 digitalized Brazilian cookbook 1 digitalized special edition of a food magazineTexts collected from the internet

Parallel Corpus so far 2 digitalized Brazilian bilingual cookbooks

Corpus content so far

Comparable corpus Parallel corpus

English Portuguese English Portuguese

text recipe text recipe text recipe text recipe

8,742 113,528 75,647 150,526 30,010 48,334 33,357 48,481

122,270 226,173 78,344 81,838

Text Header <Header>

<title><tit> Peixada </tit><filename> NEPBpeixada02_PO </filename><collection> pratos </collection>

</title><sourceText>

<language> PB </language><mode> internet </mode><author> </author><publisher> Brazil Channel </publisher><pubPlace> http://www.brazilchannel.com.br/brasil/mostrar_receita.asp?

nome=Peixada+com+Legumes+e+Pir%E3o&estado=Para%EDba </pubPlace>

<pubdate> </pubdate><accessDate> 04/abril/2007 </accessDate><comments></comments>

</sourceText><researcher> Alva </researcher>

</Header>

Text tagging

<titrec> recipe title </titrec>

<ingr> list of ingredients </ingr>

<modfaz> description of preparation </modfaz>

<class> additional information, such as: number of servings, type of dish, nutritional info, preparation time, cost, etc </class>

<coment> comments by recipe author </coment>

Text tagging<titrec> Peixada com Legumes e Pirão </titrec><ingr> INGREDIENTES:1 kg peixe em posta Repolho e batatas cozidasCebola, pimentão e tomate ColorauAlho SalCheiro verde Ovos cozidos1/2 lata de creme de leite Azeite de olivaÁgua Óleo</ingr><modFaz> Preparo:Temperar as postas com limão, sal, pimenta e alho. Refogar os temperos com óleo e um pouco de

azeite de oliva. Juntar o peixe, o molho em que foi temperado e o repolho. Acrescentar água fervendo, um pouco de sal e colorau e deixar cozinhar. Quando o peixe estiver pronto juntar o creme de leite, as batatas e os ovos cozidos. Com uma parte do caldo fazer um pirão.

</modFaz><class> </class><coment> </coment>

Term extraction

Keywords• Extracted comparing the study corpus with a general corpus

of cooking recipes Brazilian cooking

Cooking corpus of 1.5 million words (Teixeira 2008)• CoMET/CorTec site: Cooking 2 Corpus • WordList• Concordances

Concordance

Concordance• Each keyword may generate several entries for the

Glossary feijão (beans)

Ingredients: feijão carioca/carioquinha, feijão de corda, feijão mulatinho, feijão preto, feijão verde

Dishes: tutu de feijão, virado/viradinho de feijão, feijão tropeiro, etc.

Workflow

Keywords distributed among team members Analysis of concordance lines for each keyword Selection of terms Insertion of terms in e-Termos Collaborative writing of entries Collaborative review of entries Online publication of Glossary

Glossary building

e-Termos• http://www.etermos.ufscar.br/index.php• Free, collaborative platform for terminology extraction,

glossary building and online publication• It comprises 6 modules:

1. automatic corpus compilation – not yet functional2. analysis and support of corpus quality3. automatic term extraction - WordList4. ontology and term categorization5. management of terminology database6. online publication of glossary

Sample entry

vatapá (s.m.) 1. vatapá; 2. Brazilian creamy seafood stew with coconut milk: 3. “a thick yellow or yellow-orange purée of dried smoked shrimp, ground peanuts and cashews, bread crumbs, ginger, malagueta peppers, coconut milk, and dendé palm oil. It is also a stuffing for the bean fritter called acarajé.” (PETERSON & PETERSON, 1995, p. 98). Recipe: http://southamericanfood.about.com/od/maincourses/r/vatapa.htm

Brazilian Cooking Project Team Stella Esther Ortweiler Tagnin – coordinator Leandro Henrique Mendonça de Oliveira – EMBRAPA (e-Termos developer) Sabrina Matuda – master’s student Rozane Rodrigues Rebechi – master’s student Andréa Geroldo dos Santos – master’s student Marlene Andreetto – master’s student Elisa Duarte Teixeira – voluntary researcher Alvamar H. C. Andrade Lamparelli – voluntary researcher Josimeire Cristina Martins – voluntary researcher Luciana Latarini Ginezi – voluntary researcher Marlene Deboni – voluntary researcher Carolina Zuppardo – voluntary researcher Soraia Manzela – voluntary researcher

Thank you

Stella : seotagni@usp.br Elisa: elisadut@usp.br Carmen Miranda art by Miriam Duarte (http://www.miriamduarte.com.br/)