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, 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! Bonjour Paris is pleased to have Barbara Wilde as a contributor.
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