Tin-Fluting It and Vinegar Tongues

Gabrielle Roy, a Franco-Manitoban author who settled in Montreal, wrote a book called Bonheur d'occasion. A literal translation of that would render it into "Second-hand happiness," which could possibly work as a title. Maybe. We'll never know. The translator, Hannah Josephson, chose to call the English translation The Tin Flute. This example is surely not the first example of a translator drastically changing a book's title, but somehow, the name stuck, and the practice is now referred to in some circles as "tin-fluting."

Tin-fluting is not reserved for books alone. Movie titles are routinely altered to try to convey a message or to hit a target audience. The Sound of Music got changed into My Songs, My Dreams... and that was in Austria, of all places, where practically no one has even heard of it. Mexico changed Good Will Hunting into Untamed Mind, Italy thought that A League of Their Own would sell better as Winning Girls, also changing City Slickers into the interminable Escape from the City Life, Love and Cows. We may find these titles somewhat hilarious, but there's a reason that they are changed. Sometimes there's another choice that would pack a better punch. Sometimes the original title includes the name of a character has been changed in the subtitles, like the above example with Good Will Hunting, or the Italian An Unpredictable Type for the Adam Sandler "classic" Happy Gilmore.  And sometimes, concepts and insinuations are simply untranslatable from one culture to another. 

Polish Poster for The Godfather II, Russian poster for Rabbit Hole, Polish poster for The Terminator

All this to justify, again, my hesitance about the title. I'd love to work with the author on this project, she would be the ultimate resource to have on my side, to clarify points and be able to ask "what did you mean here?" and all that. I just hope she doesn't have any particular attachment to her title.

Anyway. My translation problem for this post: food. This novel has a few passages that go into quite a lot of detail about food and food preparation and what things are called. At one point, it mentions items that would be on a "typical" truckstop diner's menu:
Du pâté chinois. 

Du Salisbury steak. 

Des langues dans le vinaigre.

I know that sometimes people call pâté chinois shepherd's pie or cottage pie, and Salisbury steak is self-evident, but tongues in vinegar? Really? Is this someone being facetious? Or do they, somewhere in Quebec, serve this at truckstops? And what would the equivalent be elsewhere? Pickled eggs? I don't think so...