Still moving, even if slowly

May and June have had a lot of deviations, for me, from my daily routine. As a consequence I haven’t done much work on this project nor much in terms of my virtual trek. I’m using a GPS trace of the Camino de Santiago to map my workouts on a stationary treadmill in the basement, as an incentive to keep up my miles. With the interference I’ve had in the last two months I’ve fallen quite a bit.

For the first five months of my virtual trek I average about 25.5 miles/month. Not much when compared to an actual trek (typical distance of 1.5-2 days). But I’ve also averaged 537 miles/month on a stationary bike so overall my exercise is fairly high. However during May-June I’ve only averaged about 14 miles/month, more due to missing days than shorter days. Hopefully I’ll get back on track.

But all this has brought me, as of yesterday, 208.1 miles on my virtual Camino, which is probably more than most do on the real pilgrimage which is now mostly tourists joining the fad on short guided trips. So where does that put me?  Just a bit beyond Castrojeriz, still in Burgos Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. Actually Castrojeriz is the biggest town I’ve passed through in some time and there are enough tourist/pilgrim accommodations to “visit” numerous albergues and restaurants, one of which has an online menu.

So that means I get to look at another menu for any interesting details beyond the simple (nearly-)literal translation Google does for webpages. (Google claims to be context-oriented but I think that’s an overblown claim as I’ve previously documented in older posts). Reading menus (with some smartphone app) is the long-range goal of my project and finding menus (critical from Spain, not just in Spanish) and translating them and researching eccentricities in translation will produce raw material for my corpus of dual Spanish-English entries on which to base my app.

So, let’s look at Casa Cordón’s carta (menu) in Castrojeriz, Burgos, Spain. It has two sections of entrantes (starters), frío (cold) and caliente (hot), a section of primeros (first) and a section of segundos (seconds), a fairly typical menu listing.  [Note: usually carta is equivalent to a la carte in USA versus menu which is usually some limited set of choices for a particular price, i.e. equivalent of prix fixe in USA] The entrantes have few surprises (in translation) but here are a couple of interest:

cecina de León

Lion smoked beef

While cecina might indeed be beef it is usually translated as just ‘cured meat’ and thus might be from any animal and some people might care which. At least ‘cured meat’ is, at minimum, a more useful translation.

I also note three different “meanings” of de (simply of):  1) queso de oveja (sheep) or queso de cabra (goat): in this case de describes which animal’s milk is used to produce the cheese; 2) variedad de setas (literally: ‘variety of mushrooms’, more correctly means an “assortment” of mushrooms, not a particular variety as per the literal translation): in this case de is used in the conventional manner of a preposition; and, 3) morcilla de Burgos (which Google didn’t “translate” as all): in this case de means a particular type of morcilla (blood sausage) typical of the Burgos area (not made out of bits of burgoses). Now some visitors might know what morcilla is (it is common and often found) but again some people might actual want to know it is a sausage with blood in the mix. So these translations, at minimum, could be a bit more helpful than what Google (or probably any smartphone translation) would provide.

There are a couple of other interesting failures in translation that a little research (hard to do while a server is waiting for you to order or if you don’t have an Internet connection to do searches).

Crema Castellana

Cream Castellana

This is a named dish (in the style of Castile, aka Castilian) for which there are multiple recetas (recipes). Translating crema to creme can be literally correct but also often refers to a cream-based soup. In most of the recipes for this item ‘puree’ would be a more accurate translation (the key ingredients are garlic, eggs and old bread). This is a typical case where a really good menu translation would require a description of the item not just a literal translation.

Tallarines con tomate

Noodles with tomato

Now some type of noodles with some type of tomato sauce is probably all you need to know but ‘noodle’ is fairly vague (although the literal translation from Oxford for the singular (and accented) tallarín). Somehow Google search connects this to a Wikipedia entry on tagliatelle (this is a mysterious process I’ve previously reported) but I can’t confirm any definition connection of tallarín as tagliatelle,  so simply ‘noodles’ will have to suffice. Often in photos I’ve seen penne more commonly with simple tomato sauce, but probably pasta is just pasta to a hungry peregrino.

Lechazo de Castilla y León

Lechazo de Castilla y León

Somehow Google missed this (I’ve seen it get it right, maybe the “context” of de Castilla y León confused it despite the fact any trekker would know they’re in Castilla y León and thus this is just a regional designation. Remember leche is milk would help but really knowing lechazo is one of several terms for ‘suckling’ (not weaned young animal) is better. But this term is used for both piglets and lambs, so the menu alone, even translated better, might not be sufficient to decide to order this item and thus conversation would be needed.

Perdiz de Monte escabechada

Pickled Monte Partridge

Here learning perdiz (correctly translated as partridge) is helpful and escabechada is derived from the verb escabechar (to pickle, to souse) is fairly literal, but what about monte – is this some additional (and relevant?) qualification of partridge.  monte normally would mean ‘mountain’ but it can also mean ‘woodland’. This was a bit difficult to track down but it does appear to be a particular wild partridge that is now fairly rare although there is a farmed version that is similar. But searches also revealed a tinned pâté of this bird so it’s still unclear exactly what this menu item might be.

And finally, lubina a la espalda or dorada a la espalda. lubina is correctly translated by Google as ‘sea bass’ but, as I’ve usually seen dorada is translated (literally, but wrong in this context) to ‘gold’ or ‘golden’. In fact it’s a particular type of fish with some dispute whether it is ‘gilt-head bream’ (more likely as this is a Mediterranean fish) or ‘dolphin [fish]’, aka, ‘mahi-mahi’ which is less likely as this is not commonly found in Spain. I’ve had mahi-mahi (and like it) but never gilt-head bream so it would be a bit of adventure to order this (and given the typical blandness of fish could I even tell which it is).

But items then use a la espalda as further description but what does this mean? Google did a literal translation of ‘on the back’ but that’s not helpful. Often on menus for fish there is a qualifier of which part of the fish, e.g. cheek, belly, filet so is ‘back’ something like this? No, as best I can tell from photos in search results it simply looks like a cooking method where the entire fish is split and flattened and then fried with skin (back) side down, i.e. a fairly simple preparation. I can’t confirm this so this is one of those terms I’ll add to my corpus, provisionally, with a lower confidence value.

So hopefully I can pick up my pace, both trekking and posting, but at least one of the issues that has reduced my activity will continue for a while so posts may be less common.