Role of Languages in Consumers' Food Description: Contrasting Malagasy and French Descriptors of Moringa oleifera Leaf Powder

Language might have an effect on the quality of sensory profiles on food description. In cross-cultural studies, it was observed that the effect of language and cultures cannot be easily separated. This work aimed to separate these two effects by working with bilingual consumers speaking Malagasy and French languages. Five samples of dried Moringa oleifera leaf powder were described by flash profiles by four different consumer panels. Two panels performed flash profiles using French language and the two others used Malagasy language. The duplication of profiles in each language aimed to determine the importance of differences between panels using the same language and panels using different languages. There was no effect of language on the global quantity of words and the general repartition of words between sensory categories was similar. A higher number of meta-descriptors were generated in French for the odor/aroma descriptors category. Malagasy language gave more numerous specific meta-descriptors than the French one for visual category, while it was the contrary for odor/aroma and taste categories. French terminology was more precise thanks to the use of qualifiers associated to the descriptors to specify their meaning. No effect of language was observed on the positioning of the powders. Practical ApplicationsThis study offers new insight into the effect of languages on the description of food by consumers. When performing sensory analysis in bilingual countries, the choice of the language does not seem to influence the resulting analysis of products. For sensory analyses performed with people having different culture and language, our results suggest that the effects of culture would predominate over the effects of language to explain the differences that are frequently observed.