Vine Atlas of Spain and Portugal – Hans Jörg Böhm

~A Translator’s Eye View~

 

What is the book about?

Much of the content of the Vine Atlas of Spain and Portugal has remained inaccessible to the English-speaking world of wine until now.

This holds true for each of the four sections of the book:

I HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF IBERIAN VINE VARIETIES

II VITIS SYLVESTRIS IN IBERIA

III TERROIR

IV AMPELOGRAPHY (Grapevine Variety Profiles)

  • This volume brings together detailed articles written by key Spanish and Portuguese researchers and authorities at the forefront of their respective fields.
  • The varied authorship has nevertheless been presented in a style that is both consistent and concise, and provides an holistic overview of current issues in Iberian viticulture, which are also of broader, international relevance.
  • Some articles were written specifically for this book, whilst others are published here for the first time.
  • The English version of the Ampelography has a uniformity that was difficult to achieve given the diverse sources of information in both Spain and Portugal. The Ampelography, prepared in line with OIV guidelines, is in itself the product of countless collaborations over a number of years by Hans Jörg Bohm, the collaborating authors, and the many vitivinicultural institutes they collectively represent.
  • The multifaceted perspectives of the Vine Atlas of Spain and Portugal narrative combine seamlessly with a wealth of illustration and excellent photography throughout.

Title Verso
I have the author’s permission to publish excerpts such as these.

 

This work is a translation from the German Rebsortenatlas Spanien Portugal – Geschichte – Terroir – Ampelographie (© 2011, 288 Seiten, 250 farbige Abbildungen, Maße: 31 cm, Gebunden, Deutsch. ULMER EUGEN ISBN-10: 3800176823 ISBN-13: 9783800176823).

Separate hard cover German and Portuguese versions were launched in Portugal In September 2011. Lack of funding has meant that the completely edited and marked up English translation is currently seeking a publisher.

Table of contents
Being a German to English translator does not always mean translating from German to English.

I translated one article on “Intravarietal Genetic Variability in Grapevine Varieties” and the book jacket directly from the Portuguese. I edited a second article written in English by a Spanish scientist entitled, “Genetic Origin of Iberian Peninsula Grapevine Cultivars”.

Collaborating Authors
Inside front of jacket

Knowledge of Portuguese has proven to be an important tool in the translation of this work encompassing a broad range of subject matters, as it did when dealing with layout and design staff in the final revision stage.

Somewhat tangentially, I wrote a non serious take on this and aspects related to the translation process called The Vine Book, and one other which turns out to be its precursor, Lucky Number Seven.

At the book launch: Allison Wright (Translator), Hans Jörg Böhm (Author)
Note to translators in hindsight: Less coffee and more sleep is the wiser choice – advice I did not follow.

I was fortunate to have close collaboration with the author and coordinator, Hans Jörg Böhm, as I was to meet a good many of the collaborating authors at the launch.

I include here a link (In Portuguese) of an account of the book launch by the IVV – Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho [Institute of Vine and Wine] – which I attended and which took place on 15 September 2011 at the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa [Academy of Sciences of Lisbon].

Hans Jörg Böhm making his speech at the book launch in the Salão Nobre da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa [Great Hall of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon] in which he referred to me as “uma tradutora apaixonante” (a passionate translator).

 

The oddity of being the German-English translator of the as yet unpublished English translation attending a book launch conducted entirely in Portuguese ought to be noted somewhere. Fortunately, my Portuguese is improving all the time, and I managed to be just as sociable as I usually am at such affairs.

Abstract from,
“The Vine Atlas of Spain and Portugal – History, Terroir and Ampelography”

The jacket blurb detailing the many achievements of Mr Böhm in the world of vitiviniculture makes very interesting reading. I translated it from the Portuguese. To this day, I have not had sight of the German. C’est la vie.

THE BLURB

Hans Jörg Böhm

Author and Coordinator Hans Jörg Böhm was born on 1 July 1938 in the German town of Neustadt an der Weinstraße. He holds a degree in Economics and has many years’ experience in the international wine trade. In the early 1980s he made the decision to take a further course of study at the Geisenheim Research Center with a view to preparing himself for the challenge of creating a company in Portugal which would be the first of its kind with the objective of improving the nation’s viticultural stock. At roughly the same time he established Plansel SA, a breeding nursery and estate for selected grapevine varieties, thereby initiating an innovative project involving the collection of specific grapevine varieties and viticultural breeding programmes. This was made possible by his instrumental role in facilitating protocols of cooperation between the Geisenheim Research Center’s grapevine breeding department, the University of Évora and the Portuguese National Agricultural Research Station’s plant pathology department. The project gained recognition as a technology transfer initiative of direct benefit to Portugal and as such received sponsorship from KfW (Kredietanstalt für Wiederaufbau), the German government-owned bank based in Frankfurt. The project’s clonal selection resulted not only in clones of grapevine varieties and rootstocks being officially recognised but also in two new fungus-resistant varieties being created in accordance with the regulations contained in the UPOV Convention (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants). Hans Jörg Böhm was the founder and a director of VITICERT, the association of viticultural plant breeders in Portugal, member of a CIP (Confederation of Portuguese Industry) delegation to a European Federation of Nurserymen conference held in Geneva, President of the former International Association of Grapevine Breeders based in San Michele (Italy) as well as a member of other viticultural organisations. Plansel SA has participated in many innovation projects and technology transfer projects (KfW, JNICT, NATO, EC initiatives and INIA and ADI programmes) side by side with international partners such as BfA Geilweilerhof, Geisenheim Research Center, LALEFO Neustadt, the Frauenhofer-Institut, Aachen, the University of Bari (Italy), ENTAV (France), Cornell University (USA) and Foundation Plant Services, University of California, Davis (USA) and has thus achieved concrete results in the quest to improve quality in viticulture. In 2001, Hans Jörg Böhm retired from active involvement in his company, Plansel SA. Shortly thereafter, he became a member of the Porter Cluster. After facilitating some seven different symposia and workshops, he devoted himself to his task as Convenor of the first International Symposium on Grapevine Growing, Commerce and Research held in Portugal under the aegis of the ISHS. During the period of Portugal’s accession to the European Union, he began to collate data gathered in Portugal on grapevine varieties, and participated in events relating to Portuguese grapevine varieties at many congresses, including those of the OIV (Mainz), ISHS, FPS University of California, Davis and ADI (Rio de Janeiro). He is co-author and coordinator of O Grande Livro das Castas – Portugal Vitícola (Chaves Ferreira – Publicações, 2007), the precursor to this volume. In 2009, he published a book in Portuguese on the Marquis of Montemor. In 2006 the President of the Portuguese Republic, Dr. Jorge Sampaio, bestowed on him the distinction of Comendador da Ordem de Mérito Agrícola (Commander of the Order of Merit for Agriculture) in recognition of his achievements.

END OF BLURB

Since completion of the above:

In May 2012, I wrote a guest blog on Catherine Translates entitled, “Translating a 125,000-word book: connections and corrections” about my experience.

The trilingual BETA version of the Vine to Wine Circle portal was launched on 3 January 2013. It contains the Vine Atlas of Spain and Portugal, and its German and Portuguese counterparts, substantial content from O Grande Livro das Castas (in all three languages), and an extra section on the wine regions of Portugal drafted especially for this portal.

In other words, “the vine book” has been published.

Vine to Wine Circle

Allison

Recent Posts

Secure syntax and moral excellence

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The picture of a pot purple petunias against
a background of a yellow rose creeper
cannot be uploaded because of my slow
Internet connection. Never mind. It has
nothing to do with the blog at all.

I had an English Literature teacher in my senior years at school who deplored those who mistook “moral squeamishness for virtue”.

I am slightly amused now to think back to our seventeen year-old selves for whom the pursuit of virtue only occasionally ranked high on our list of priorities. Or perhaps I should say, a semblance of the pursuit, or embodiment, of virtue. In truth, we were more innocent than virtuous. Some of us had already shed more innocence than others, and had begun to discover the libidinous delights permeating the great Literature of our language. We experienced considerable vicarious pleasure in finding the more salacious descriptive passages in novels, and giggled at all the bawdy bits in that part of our syllabus devoted to Shakespeare.

I am also slightly amused to realise now that our Literature teacher would have been in what is rather blandly referred to as the prime of one’s life. I was fascinated at the time by the expressiveness of her hands, which in body language terms both shielded us from, and betrayed to those who were watching, her endlessly unfolding appreciation of her own sexuality.

It was the title of this blog, itself a quote from an article announcing the introduction of a new grammar and spelling test into English school’s next week, which prompted the above rambling. I suspect that this new programme is designed chiefly for beleaguered teachers to get their knickers in a twist more than they already are.

I shudder and wince as easily as the next linguist when I am confronted by many instances of language use which offend my grammatical sensibilities. I am also very much aware that I had what appears to have been a privileged education. I will also concede that the world is made up of people of many different talents and varying degrees of linguistic aptitude; not everyone is destined to become a grammar buff. I am not so worried about the shortcuts one encounters in text messages. I dislike SMS intensely because it is slow and clumsy. I assume the writers of such texts do know the full version of their abbreviated messages. This may well be naïve, but at least it keeps me calm.

The problem, however, is that what is being discussed is basic grammar. The emphasis is indeed on the adjective basic. Neither the structures involved nor the concepts themselves are complex. Attitude is everything. The chief stumbling block seems to me to be that learning these fundamental elements of the way our language is structured is hard work. Yes, it does require concentration. Yes, it does mean you cannot be distracted. Yes, it does mean doing repetitive exercises. There is no fun way to learn grammar. Or, in my experience, a particularly fun way to teach it – unless you are an inventive, enthusiastic teacher who has a penchant for thinking up really great examples which are sometimes amusing.

Depending on your perspective, grammar’s saving grace is that it may just be slightly more fun than learning how to add one half and one quarter, and finding out that 75% is a cool way to say three-quarters.  And if that is the case, then three-eighths in percentage terms will be half of 75, which is 37.5%. And if you want to know what percentage five-eighths is, all you have to do is subtract 37.5 from 100. The point of this little excursion into mental arithmetic is that no one teaches you the gymnastics part of mathematics. You discover mathematical acrobatics all on you own as a natural extension of mastering the basics.

Why is grammar more fun than fractions and percentages? Because of innate human creativity.

Once you have mastered basic grammar – and even the experts agree that even a child can do it – there are endless possibilities. These possibilities present themselves every single time you say or write something. Using the simple Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure alone, for example, you can write poems. Try it! This is a liberating experience in a way that knowing five-eighths has the same value as 62.5% never can be.

Mathematics and grammar share a common attribute: Both have structure. Structure is not a scary word. It is a beautiful word which gives rise to all manner of architectural wonders from Gothic cathedrals to cantilevered bridges, to shopping malls, for Pete’s sake. When grammar – or syntax – and mathematics come together, what you get is computer programming.  I view this as a positive outcome, don’t you?

Although the neurolinguistic debate (centred on the nature/nurture argument) still rages on, one thing is clear to me, and it is this:  Like getting to grips with basic mathemathics, understanding the grammar – or structure – of any language is, barring disability, entirely possible for everyone precisely because it is based on the constructs of the human mind.

Grammar is nothing more than a set of more or less agreed conventions designed to make communication with each other easier.

This is why I am not overly fond of prescriptivists who never boldly go beyond the pale. (I thought some of you might like the mish-mash of metaphors in that last sentence.) In modern-speak, prescriptivists are the grammar police who are too busy complaining about the mistakes others make – whether in haste or for want of a decent education – to realise that it is they themselves who unwittingly give grammar a bad name. To quote from the article:

Grammar is connected to values in people’s minds. “Grammar peevers” in projects such as the Apostrophe Protection Society see “a connection between secure syntax and moral excellence”, Hitchings argues. “There’s a feeling that if we can maintain grammatical order we can maintain other kinds of order.”

These are the people who equate moral squeamishness with virtue. These are the people who never read the juiciest bits in the classics and everything else since, or indulge in the glorious poetry of it all. They are too busy finding fault. These are the people who would rather remove a misplaced apostrophe from the plural of the word apple, instead of biting into that apple and drooling over its sweetness. No reference to the Garden of Eden is intended. I just like apples. Fig leaves, not so much.

Ironically, these are the very people who might make it possible for today’s children not only to have a choice as to how they express themselves, but also to enjoy a bloody good read to boot!

Allison

P.S.
There will have to be a Part II to this blog, possibly dealing with the translation aspect of this phenomenon, and other aspects which worry very few people. The few who do worry, however, worry a lot. In the meantime, perhaps you would like to ponder this: “Should grammar lessons be compulsory for our nation’s future apple sellers?”

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