I edited a French patisserie recipe book written by a French food company to promote their products to professional pastry chefs. I edited a machine translated version to make it make sense to English-speaking chefs. The key changes I made included:
- Clarifying the instructions, e.g. distinguish when mélanger meant mix and when it meant fold. When a meringue was added to a mixture it definitely needed folding in so the air wasn’t knocked out of it.
- Corrected literal translations, e.g when beurre noisette had been translated literally as hazelnut butter instead of brown butter/burnt butter.
- Corrected false friends. The recipes referred to biscuit, which in this context referred to sponge rather than biscuit, given that it was a layer in an entremet.
- Inserted correct terminology, e.g. for hydrater la gélatine in English you don’t hydrate the gelatine, you bloom it. The French used ‘feuille’ (leaf) for the paddle attachment on a stand mixer.
- Researched correct equipment names, e.g. dough sheeter for laminoir.
Client testimonial:
Stephanie has been working with us as a freelancer translator for over a year and we are very happy with the collaboration. She is responsive, nice to work with and she provides quality translations.
– Dana Lipszyc – Project Manager, ITC Global Translations