Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

2202124  Introduction to Translation

Informative Text (Thai-English) Discussion

Translate the following into English.

ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเป็นอาหารชนิดหนึ่งของจีน ส่วนใหญ่ทำจากแป้งข้าวเจ้า นำมาลวกให้สุกในน้ำเดือด แล้วใส่ส่วนประกอบต่าง ๆ เช่น ผัก หมู หรือเนื้อสัตว์อื่น ๆ รับประทานได้ทั้งแบบแห้งและแบบน้ำ มีหลักฐานว่าคนจีนรับประทานก๋วยเตี๋ยวกันมากว่า 4,000 ปีแล้ว ชาวจีนที่อพยพมายังประเทศไทย ได้นำก๋วยเตี๋ยวเข้ามา ราวศตวรรษที่ 15 ในระยะแรกหาเลี้ยงชีพด้วยการขายก๋วยเตี๋ยว ในชุมชนชาวจีน ในอดีต ก๋วยเตี๋ยวจึงถือว่าเป็นอาหารของคนยากจน

ในปี พ.ศ. 2482 เมื่อครั้งจอมพล ป. พิบูลสงครามเป็นนายกรัฐมนตรี ประเทศไทยได้รับผลกระทบจากภาวะเศรษฐกิจตกต่ำทั่วโลก รัฐบาลได้เชิญชวนให้ประชาชนรับประทานก๋วยเตี๋ยว เพราะมีประโยชน์ ทำได้ง่าย และราคาถูก นอกจากนี้ยังได้ส่งเสริมให้คนไทยเลี้ยงหมู ปลูกถั่วงอก และผักชนิดอื่น ๆ เพื่อจะได้ทำก๋วยเตี๋ยวกินเองในครัวเรือนได้ นอกจากนี้ยังให้หัวหน้าหน่วยงานต่าง ๆ ของรัฐบาลขายก๋วยเตี๋ยวด้วย คนไทยจึงได้เริ่มขายก๋วยเตี๋ยวกันเป็นครั้งแรก เมื่อประมาณ 70 ปีที่แล้ว และทำให้อาหารชนิดนี้ได้รับความนิยมมาจนทุกวันนี้

Reference

• จอมพล ป. พิบูลสงคราม
• Great Depression
• "About the Great Depression," University of Illinois
  The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.

Discussion

• When is food countable and when is it not?
  Consider the following text samples and their use of food as a countable or uncountable noun.
• Countable
• In 1968 Yayoi Kusama did an exhibit based entirely on her fear of macaroni/pasta and mechanized foods. ("The Untold History of Pasta" 2017)
• "Ramen is one of the most minutely documented foods in Japan" (Brickman, "The History of the Ramen Noodle" 2014)
• In Japan, the dish was embraced widely as a practical emergency food after a live television broadcast of a hostage standoff (Brickman, "The History of the Ramen Noodle" 2014)
• It was probably the sago palm, which produces a starchy food that resembles, but is not pasta. (López, "The Twisted History of Pasta" 2016)
• Pasta is one of the world’s most accessible foods. (Avey, "Uncover the History of Pasta" 2011)
• Ambiguous use of mostly
  When you translate the Thai "ส่วนใหญ่ทำจากแป้งข้าวเจ้า" into the English "Mostly it is made from rice flour," you might be saying
• Most noodles are made from rice flour [which is what the Thai says]; or,
• The mixture that makes noodles consists mostly of rice flour [which is not what the Thai says]
• made + which preposition?
  Compare these sentences and notice what they mean.
• Made from the flour of durum wheat, pasta takes its name from the pasty texture of the dough when it is first mixed. (López, "The Twisted History of Pasta" 2016)
• Scientists believe the noodles found may have been made from two kinds of millet (Noone, "Who Invented the Noodle, Italy or China?" 2017)
• This is a reference to the dough, made from a combination of flour and water or eggs—all simple components that have been around for centuries. (Avey, "Uncover the History of Pasta" 2011)
• กิน: Consider collocations and different usage of these various terms for "eat."
• have
• eat
• consume
• partake
• Parallel Construction
• dry vs. dried
• เพื่อจะได้ทำก๋วยเตี๋ยวกินเองในครัวเรือนได้
• so they can make kway teow at home
• so they can make their own kway teow at home
• so they can make kway teow in their own households
• so they can make kway teow to eat in their households [Cumbersome?]
• คนไทยจึงได้เริ่มขายก๋วยเตี๋ยวกันเป็นครั้งแรก เมื่อประมาณ 70 ปีที่แล้ว
• which was how Thais first started selling kway teow around seventy years ago
• So Thai people began selling noodles about seventy years ago.
• ..., beginning Thai vending of kway teow seventy-odd years ago.

Vocabulary

• ก๋วยเตี๋ยว
• kway teow
• noodles
• อาหารชนิดหนึ่งของจีน
• อาหาร: Compare these various English terms for "food"
• food
• food (Oxford Dictionaries)
  [mass noun]
  Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.
  ‘we need food and water’
  ‘they had eaten their food and slept’
  [count noun] ‘baby foods’
  [as modifier] ‘food shortages’
  figurative ‘music is food for the soul’
• food (Cambridge Dictionary)
  noun [ C or U ] UK ​  /fuːd/ US ​  /fuːd/
  something that people and animals eat, or plants absorb, to keep them alive:
  baby food
  cat food
  plant food
  There was a lot of food and drink at the party.
  I'm allergic to certain foods.
  All the shops were closed, so we couldn't buy any food.
  The fridge keeps food at a constant temperature.
  We have only a small amount of food and clothing to deal out to each refugee.
  I'll bring some food along and we can have a picnic.
  Many snack foods are high in salt, sugar and fat.
• dish
• menu
• fare
• cuisine
• a kind/type of
• one of + plural noun: note that the sense of this phrase is not the same as that of "a kind of something"
• Variations
• Noodles are a type of Chinese dish
• Kway teow is a Chinese dish
• make with different prepositions
• make for: to go toward (a place), often quickly
• 
  
• make for: to result in, make possible, cause something to happen
• These cooks kneaded their dough with kansui, a bubbly mineral water, which made for a new kind of noodle—longer, yellower and more elastic. (Demain "Discomfort Food" 2011)
• "Made from, made of, made out of, made with," English Grammar Today
  Made from
  We often use made from when we talk about how something is manufactured:
  
  Plastic is made from oil.
  The earliest canoes were made from tree trunks.
  
   
  Made of
  We use made of when we talk about the basic material or qualities of something. It has a meaning similar to ‘composed of’:
  
  She wore a beautiful necklace made of silver.
  A: What’s this table made of?
  B: It’s oak, American white oak.
  A: It’s lovely.
  
   
  Made out of
  We usually use made out of when we talk about something that has been changed or transformed from one thing into another:
  
  In the 1970s, it was popular to have candle-holders made out of wine bottles.
  They were living in tents made out of old plastic sheets.
  
   
  Made with
  We use made with most often to talk about the ingredients of food and drink:
  
  This dish is made with beef, red peppers and herbs.
  Is sushi always made with raw fish or do the Japanese use cooked fish too?
• pork
• meat
• meat (Macmillan Dictionary)
  1 [UNCOUNTABLE] the flesh of an animal or bird eaten as food
  a. [COUNTABLE] a particular type of meat
  You can choose from a selection of meats.
  2 [UNCOUNTABLE] INFORMAL interesting or important parts of something such as a book, film, or newspaper article
  a lot of nice words but not much meat
  the meat of something: Let’s examine the meat of her argument.
• evidence (uncountable noun)
• food with different prepositions
• food of (poor people)
• food for (poor people)
• to make a/one's living doing something
• to earn a living by doing something
• consider
• เศรษฐกิจตกต่ำทั่วโลก
• The Great Depression
• worldwide economic depression
• economic slump
• เลี้ยงหมู
• raise
• to have someone do something
• popular

Links

• Noodle Information
• Justin McDonnell, "The History of Noodles: How a Simple Food Became a Worldwide Staple," The Atlantic, 13 Aug. 2013.
  The author Jen Lin-Liu traveled from Beijing to Rome to trace the origins and spread of the popular culinary item—and enjoyed some tasty surprises along the way.
  [...]
  Both the Italians and Chinese lay claim to inventing the noodle. According to your research, where did noodles come from?
  
  The oldest historical mention of noodles I could find appears in a dictionary from the third century A.D. in China. The earliest Chinese noodles, though, don't appear as strands of dough—they were shaped into little bits, formed from bread dough, and thrown into a wok of boiling water. That kind of noodle, called mian pian, is still eaten in China. This was one of the most interesting pieces of research I came across—that noodles in China actually began with its tradition of bread, something that is still widely eaten across northern China.
• John Roach, "4,000-Year-Old Noodles Found in China," National Geographic, 12 Oct. 2005.
  A 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles unearthed in China is the earliest example ever found of one of the world's most popular foods, scientists reported today. It also suggests an Asian—not Italian—origin for the staple dish.
  
  The beautifully preserved, long, thin yellow noodles were found inside an overturned sealed bowl at the Lajia archaeological site in northwestern China. The bowl was buried under ten feet (three meters) of sediment.
• Terhi, "The Origin of Chinese Noodles," GBTimes, 22 Mar. 2016.
  [...]
  In Europe, it is believed that pasta originated in Italy, but the Chinese are convinced that the world's oldest noodles were prepared in the Middle Kingdom. One proof of this is that the poet Shu Shi had written an ode to noodles dated about 300 BCE.
  
  The ode is said to be so detailed that it was used as a reference for Chinese food culture during that time. If poems have been written about noodles already during that time, then perhaps Chinese noodles are a cultural treasure and invention.
  
  Origin of noodles
  Any talk about the origin of Chinese noodles, however, has to begin with grains. In China, millet was traditionally the staple grain. Wheat had to be imported. Millet was prepared for cooking by breaking the grains, steaming them. The Chinese did not know what to do with the wheat, as it was foreign to them.
  
  Wheat was thought to be the poor man's food, or as a back-up, in case there was a shortage of millet. [...]
• Makiko Itoh, "A Short History of Japan's Long Noodles," The Japan Times, 19 Jun. 2015.
  Soba, udon and ramen noodles are all well-known outside of Japan, but sōmen — the thin, white wheat noodles that are similar to Italian angel hair pasta—is not as famous. Yet these delicate noodles are very versatile, since they can be served either hot or cold, and since they’re so thin, they cook in no time. Cold sōmen with a chilled mentsuyu (noodle dipping sauce) is especially welcome on sweltering summer days, since they go down so easily—even if you have no appetite.
  
  The first references of thin noodles to appear in documents date from the Nara Period (710–794) and indicate the noodles originated in China. Called sōmochi, they were made of rice flour and were twisted like rope, and eaten at the Imperial Court on special occasions throughout the Nara and Heian (794–1185) periods. Thin noodles made with wheat instead of rice flour started being made during the Kamakura Period (1185–1333), and there are accounts of very thin wheat noodles being served regularly as a light meal (known as tenshin) at Buddhist temples during the Muromachi Period (1392–1573).

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Last updated May 1, 2018