«Ando vai s’aa cipolla nun ce ll’hai?»: Translating food-related Romanesco items in chef Max Mariola’s social media subtitles

This paper aims at examining AVT strategies adopted by one of the most famous Roman cooks, Massimiliano Mariola (aka Max Mariola), who is very active on social media and always give English subtitles for his video recipes on Instagram and Facebook. Sagaciously positioned in the middle of the screen, so that they are perfectly between the cook’s face and the dish he is preparing, Eng subs are created to help foreigners to deal with Roman cuisine and allow them to reproduce Mariola’s recipes. Nevertheless, when coming to Romanesco items – since the cook explains his recipes with a strong Romanesco accent and dialectal words– or culture-bound expressions – as the one mentioned in the title of this paper – subtitles, as translation in general, show their limits. This paper wants to understand whether and to what extent the English AVT prevents – or facilitates – successful communication, and hence both the correct execution of a dish and the understanding of the speaker’s abundant use of boosting devices aimed at intensifying his message and catching the viewer’s attention. Some of his most viewed IG and FB video recipes of 2023 will be analysed as case studies, and both a lexicosemantic and pragmatic approach will be used as methodological framework.