My students and I are working on a large translation project. We want to explore Petr Vail and Alexander Genis's 1987 Russian Cuisine in Exile and try to bring it to an English-speaking audience. This is harder than you might think. I've taught sections of the book and written about it before , but this time we are translating selected essays into English. The introduction already defies naming. Currently we are calling it "Expressions of the Soul," but the literal translation would be "Beautiful Gusts of the Soul." You see the problem. (Perhaps the title is playing on blagorodnye poryvy , noble impulses? Comments are welcome!) The book is typically Russian, in that it has many layers and is built on literary and cultural allusions. For example, at one point the authors begin to reminisce about what were frankly impoverished culinary conditions -- the kinds of things they bought at their university cafeteria: "36 kopek studen' [a kind of
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