Il cibo dell’Altro. Traduzioni del codice alimentare

Eating, and more generally food, are often compared to language and communication: once satisfied the first human need “become[s] part of a system of differences in signification” (Barthes 1961). In this sense we can talk about food as a cultural experience: “just like the language, cooking contains and expresses the culture of those who practice it, it is the depositary of the group’s tradition and identity” (Montanari 2006). As such, it “is not only an instrument of cultural identity, but perhaps the first way to come into contact with different cultures. [...] More than language, food is suitable for mediating among different cultures, opening the cooking systems to all sorts of inventions, crossbreeds and contaminations”(ibid.). But if food is a language that reflects the structure of a society (Lévi-Strauss 1968) as well as a form of encounter between different cultures, how does the translation process between a sociocultural system and another take place? The present article aims at analyzing, through a semiotic approach but also a constant interaction with other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, the processes related to the transposition of a culinary language from a semiosphere to another one. Through the analysis of two case studies, this chapter focuses on the translation of the Eastern cooking to the Western context, stressing the importance of the spatial dimension, corporeality and the ritual practices associated with the ethnic experience in the food context.