The extraordinary adventures of Jamon Serrano in Cracow

Les aventures extraordinaires du Jamon Serrano à Cracovie

The author presents a method for translating culturemes (specific cultural notions of a country or cultural field). Her method consists of five steps: to study the content and the fonction of a cultureme X in the culture of origin and in the text of origin; to check whether that cultureme is known in the culture of arrival and whether a word for it exists in the culture of arrival; if that word exists and it can be applied in the given translated situation, it should be applied; if such a word does not exist or if it exists, but cannot be applied in the given situation, the translator should apply one of the following techniques: translation, explanation, generalisation, replacement by an equivalent, transcription, catachresis, forging of a neologism. The author applies this method to the Spanish lexeme ‘jamón serrano’ that is one of the ingredients in the recipe for a stuffed trout published in "El Pais Semanal" of September 4th, 2005. Making her students work on the translation of that recipe into Polish for seven years, the author is able to track a history of the presence of this Spanish product and of its name in Polish reality and language.