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Geez, one more potentially significant find that's obscurely published- amazing. Andy's right though, all this is leading way off track since the nature of the segmentata is a whole other argument. That the segmentata 'wouldn't' be made in copper alloy is not a defensible argument because clearly all kinds of 'common soldier' things were- just look at helmets; for that matter silver doesn't necessarily mean anything either- I have a cavalry harness decorative pendnat and phalera that are very crudly formed (compared to others) and yet are silvered. Sadly, just as is the case with that purported silvered segmentata part, the copper alloy one remains a lovely story until someone can find the proper information to allow review.
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Quote:Geez, one more potentially significant find that's obscurely published- amazing.
What is obscure about it?
Christian K.
No reconstruendum => No reconstruction.
Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.
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Quote:Quote:Geez, one more potentially significant find that's obscurely published- amazing.
What is obscure about it?
It's only in German, may I venture? :lol:
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
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Byron Angel
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Yeeeeees. 
Christian K.
No reconstruendum => No reconstruction.
Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.
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How come all the good stuff is in german? lol
What book/article is that reference from Christian?
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Magnus/Matt
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Matt,
It is not only in this field but also in chemistry. Many of the best works and experiments in Organic Chemistry are written and published in German. However, today many of those old publications have been translated into English and publications that would be in German are translated in English for the rest of the world that does not read German. However, at least in Chemistry, there is enough similarity in the language of the science that most times you can make out what is going in even if it is in German.
"You have to laugh at life or else what are you going to laugh at?" (Joseph Rosen)
Paolo
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But can you blame them. I'm doing a university study in Chemistry, and most of my lectures and all books I use are in English. My dad is teaching in the medical field were almost all is in Dutch. Why, simply because most students don't understand English well enough to have those books in English. And thats even in the Netherlands were you get at least education in 3 languages (at least most of the academic people got Dutch, English, French and German).
So I can see why people want to/ have to write in their own language. And then, I think Euro 40 for such a book is a good price. But I don't want to know the price if it has to be translated! Maybe we should ask all English speaking writers to also publish their books in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Indi (so the people at Deepeeka and DSC could easily read them), etc....
Ow and to comment on Matts question why all good stuff is in german. I wouldn't agree with that totally. Both German and the UK, as wel as France have a good archeological and historical departments and are big (which means more finds more people attracted more books more discussion -(probably/hopefully)-> better science. On this board we have a lot of native English speaking people and quite some German speaking. Besides that Germany is big, so much get published, we see a lot of good sources mentioned here in German. We see hardly anything in Frensch. But there are interesting things there. I like to visit archeological bookshops, also in France. Wonderfull books, but too expensive for me to buy, as they are in French, which I can tackle, but not fluently read. As there is so much to read in German and English I prefer to spend my money on them, instead. Which wouldn't say I've seen many interesting things in Frensh books (and I already have about 10 titles in Frensh which I couldn't resist to buy anyways). But there is even more then those in German.
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Jurjen,
I was referring to publciations in the 1980s and earlier. Many of them were left in their original language. I agree that everyone would prefer having a book in their native language. It does make the reading alot easier. However, English has become THE language for science. Nonethless, several publications in English are translated in the languages you mentioned. However, with respect to Chemistry publciations in journals, they are for the most part now written or translated into English. Between England, US, India, and some countries in Africa, English is widespread. How many people all over the world deal with Italian or Dutch. India, is not a good example because the Enlgish did occupy it and many of its people do speak English as well as any American or Enlgishman/woman.
Here in the US (1980s) anyone in college that had a major in chemistry was REQUIRED to have two semesters of German since many publications were in German. However, this requirement since the 1990s no longer is necessary because (as stated above) English is the international language of science.
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Paolo
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Sorry Poalo, but it seems I wasn't clear enough. In chemistry I accept that you are right stating English is important. I'm always feeling sad when I've to work with biologists and find out that their English is even more worse as mine is. But my comments about the language of publications were about archeological reports.
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Actually, I am amazed that books of this importance are not translated automatically.......
Seems the use of computers to translate then have an editor go through it to ensure the meanings have not altered, is no bigger a task than the actual editing of a new book to start with. Seems the potential for sales would balance any costs....
Or are all the wizz kids in IT to busy writing playstation games to bother with good translation software?.... 
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
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Byron Angel
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Quote:Actually, I am amazed that books of this importance are not translated automatically.......
I don't think it has to do with books of this importance. It's just an archeological report with a catalogue of finds. Many, many, many of these are published. Which one would you ' sign' important, and which one not. This time it is about a find of a silvered piece in there. This you think is important as you're interested in reproducing such a garnent. I like archeological reports as they provide pictures, drawings and most important measurments. But for the general public that is interested of the pieces found at site X will find that one more important than the report of site Y, while that is not their interested. So, I would prefer a catalogue of finds from the Nijmegen area over one from Y, just as I was born and grown up on there and spend 6 years of high school on top of the castra of LEG X GEM (and had sport lessons on the area of the Kops Plateau fortress 300 meters next to it).
So, what makes this catalogue so important to get translated? One find we found interesting, but was not significant importance to the people who wrote that report (otherwise they would have published the find also in another paper I would say).
Anyways, we tent to go more off-topic every post.
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Very good Jurjen, you obviously did not see my "wistful" emoticon...... :roll: :lol:
Yes, those are all the reasons I would expect to be used in a counter argument, but still does not answer my real question..... :wink:
And yes , this one is important to me, but there are also many other texts that accompany photographs that explain a lot....if you cannot read the language accurately, they are just nice picture.......
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
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Byron Angel
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Quote:Actually, I am amazed that books of this importance are not translated automatically.......
Seems the use of computers to translate then have an editor go through it to ensure the meanings have not altered, is no bigger a task than the actual editing of a new book to start with. Seems the potential for sales would balance any costs....
Or are all the wizz kids in IT to busy writing playstation games to bother with good translation software?....
Using a computer to translate a specialist book like this would probably make things more difficult, and not less, since the editor would likely have to spend more time correcting the poor grammar throughout the entire book than if they just hired one competent translator to do the whole thing.
There are a number of factors which play into this, and Jurjen covered many of them. Firstly, archaeology and classical studies are two fields in which it is basically the norm to be trilingual. These books are published with scholars in mind, and so they follow scholarly norms, one of which is that everybody covering Graeco-Roman civilization is able to read English, French, and German (and in some cases people switch French or German for Italian). This is changing bit by bit as English becomes a scholarly lingua franca, but if you expect to do any sort of productive research, you will be required to employ publications up to and well over a century old, in which case competence in those three languages is necessary.
Secondly, the nature of European archaeology dictates that books and articles will be published in common languages relevant to their general region of study, so that German, Swiss, and Austrian publications are in German; Spanish and Portuguese in Spanish; Ukrainian, Georgian, and Russian in Russian, and so forth. Obviously this can vary quite a bit, but as a general rule it still holds true for the simple reason that, for instance, most scholars working on French archaeology will be French, or at least francophone.
Thirdly, publishing books - and especially hefty, illustrated tomes like find catalogues - is extremely expensive, and with the slow transformation of the publishing industry from employing more traditional methods to more innovative digital ones, it is only getting more costly. Take into account that the only real market for scholarly archaeological publications is libraries, and you can realize why it's not uncommon for a book of of a few hundred pages to cost a few hundred euros.
Tying this back into the regionalism I mentioned before, if you are a publisher producing a multi-volume catalogue in a risky and low-profit market written by a German scholar who works best in German, obviously the book is going to be published in German. And why would you pay the sizeable cost of translating the thing when the majority of readers are going to be able to read German anyway? And just to add one last point: the worldwide publishing industry is dominated by the Germans, who own a majority of large publishing houses, and who have perhaps the longest tradition in the world of large archaeological publishing companies; therefore, they are going to publish in German when it is convenient!
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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Jurgen,
I had misunderstood what you were referring to. No problem.
Byron,
It is the video games. You know as well as I do that they are now building computers primarily for games while word processing and applications are taking the back seat.
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Paolo
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Just to add a few facts: 
founding dates of important historic journals:
1859 Historische Zeitschrift
1876 Revue Historique
1884 Rivista Storica Italiana
1886 English Historical Review
1895 American Historical Review
The first Article in the first issue of the English Historical Review was by a certain Lord Acton on "German Schools of History"
The first honorary member of the American Historical Association, which was founded in 1884, was L. v. Ranke, the "father of historical science"
For the subject of Ancient History it is also notworthy, that a larger amount of publications is in German than in French, English, Italian, or any other language. My advisor, when I studied in the US, constantly told the college students, that is is near impossible to study ancient history properly without knowing German, a language almost as important for the subject as Latin or Ancient Greek.
I lost the link, but last year there was a commission of international linguists trying to find out which language by structure is best suited for scientific communication, and, amazingly, German was the winner. One of the reasons was that German can easily produce simply understandable words by using known words and setting them together. e.g.
Rhein-Main-Donau-Dampfschiffahrtskapitänsmützenabzeichenherstellerzulieferbetrieb.
Which would be in English something like:
Company delivering materials to a company making hat signs for captains working for the Rhine-Main-Danube steam ship company
Other interesting facts:
[url:1k0i37ya]http://www.goethe.de/kue/lit/dos/dds/en146304.htm[/url]
The article also gives a small insight in the German debate about the importance of German as scientific language...
Christian K.
No reconstruendum => No reconstruction.
Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.
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