Abstract:
ABSTRACT
This thesis focused on the translation of some sections of two books concerning Chinese wild edible plants, including their therapeutic properties as well as a glossary about the encountered botanic terms and a linguistic translational commentary.
As the Thesaurus Dictionary states, foraging means “the acquisition of food by hunting, fishing, or gathering plant matters.” As a matter of fact, it is an ancient practice that developed in the years of the war, as one of the few ways to survive. Nowadays, it is known as an alternative eating trend as well as vegetarianism or veganism. Eating wild herbs is good both for one’s health and for one’s mind and it represents a free way of enjoying Nature’s best fruits.
In order to develop and complete this project, I, first of all, looked for some Chinese books about the abovementioned foraging. In the end, I succeeded into finding some documents about Chinese wild herbs and some ways of eating them. That is why I finally decided to write about the most well known species existing in China. The thesis is divided into three sections: the first one stresses on the process of foraging in general, while the second one gives a brief excursus on some Chinese plant, their characteristics as well as the way of eating some of the most common Chinese wild herbs. That is a choice I made hoping to arouse the reader’s curiosity.
Choosing such an original topic meant a quite difficult process of translation and various obstacles as far as the terminology is concerned, thereby deciding to deal with this topic in the final section.
A bibliography and the web sites I consulted in order to write this paper can be found at the end.
