[Sca-cooks] Bread things?[sig] Re: Translation/transliteration (fwd)

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

This was posted to the Slavic Interest Group a while back. With the
author's permission, I am posting it here.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa   jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"Words can be your friend or your enemy, depending on who's
throwing the book, so watch your language." Stoppard

---------- Forwarded message ----------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 09:44:03 +0100
From: Alastair Millar <alastair at iol.cz>
Reply-To: sig at yahoogroups.com
To: SIG List <sig at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [sig] Re: Translation/transliteration

Thanks to all who responded on this one.

Unfortunately I am translating a 'summary' (250 pages!) of a book to be
published in Czech, without the benefit of seeing the accompanying scale
illustrations to give dimensions. No, not a "bad" archaeologist, however
you choose to define such.

I had the impression that these objects were, however, quite small - a few
cm across, maybe. As Liudmila suggests, biscuit sized, which may well
account for their name. They are rounded and slightly conical, with a
depression in the centre of the flat side. I have no further details - the
piece referred to in my project is partial, and as far as I know
undecorated itself.

They apparently come from oven floors, but given the contexts and style of
excavation (rapid rescue digs) this is not something I would want to be
definitive about. They are known in particular from the northern range of
the Cherniakov culture, e.g. around Zhitomierzh, as well as from such sites
as Zukowice in Poland.

The bread warmer idea is interesting but would depend on size, and is I
suspect a rather more recent concept... if you're living in a
sunken-floored wooden hut with a thatch roof and a stone oven in the
corner, your grain kept in a hole in the ground outside, is keeping the
bread warm a priority? I suspect that those wanting warm bread would eat it
fresh from the oven anyway...

I agree with Liudmila in doubting that a stamp would be kept inside the
oven. As for the gingerbread... do we have any evidence whatsoever that the
early Slavic colonists in Central Europe were making gingerbread? We are
talking 6th/7th century here, not High Middle Ages... These are people who
only got the idea of wheel-turned pottery at around the beginning of the
7th century, halfway through the life of the site concerned.

FYI, I've gone for transliterating the object as khlebets in the text.
Bread is "chleba" or "chleb" in Czech, but the diminutive forms differently
and the client tells me specifically that "chlebec is Ukrainian (or
Russian), not Czech".

Cheers

Alastair

---------------------------
Alastair Millar, BSc(Hons) - alastair at iol.cz
Consultancy and translation for the heritage industry
P.O.Box 11, CZ 413 01 Roudnice, Czech Republic





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