Many of the dishes discussed on this blog do not have standard English names. I will use the native names of dishes untranslated but transliterated using familiar Latin alphabet characters into English. The first time I present a dish with a foreign name, I will display it in its native alphabet.
As an example, borscht is a famous Russian beet soup. The word exists in both languages and needs no translation. Tarator (таратор) on the other hand is a lesser known Bulgarian cucumber-yogurt soup. Rather than call it “Cucumber Soup,” it will be called Tarator on this website, which is a foreign Bulgarian word transliterated–but not translated–into English. I will include the description or definition of the item in the introduction to a recipe so the term can become familiar.
I’ll try to make the most straightforward transliterations possible so the average person can sound them out properly. They won’t necessarily be rendered the way a linguist or native speaker might do it.
I will also use italics for foreign words that aren’t recipes in the blog but not for foreign words that are recipes (because once I’ve written about and given you a recipe for an item, it’s now in your English vocabulary!). I’ll provide links to recipes when a foreign word in a post is itself a dish that has been covered on the blog. And I’ll try to provide links to outside sources that give more explanation or context about foreign ingredients, dishes, places, etc.
Whew, hope that wasn’t too confusing! The gist is, I’ll spell it out for you as much as possible.