Hello all. I am working on a book on the Chinese military in the 1930s. The ZB firm in Brno was a major supplier at the time. Fortunately, an excellent 2-volume history of ZB was published in 1969. Unfortunately, it is in Czech. I have worked with German, Polish, Russian and even Hungarian, and figured "how hard can Czech be?". Boy, was I wrong. Anyway, I have two questions, which I will split into two posts for clarity. The book has two tables in the back that show arms exports. One is entitled "Zahranicni dodávky zbraní a munice Zbrojovky Brno" The other is entitled "Seznam válecného materiálu, dodaného v letch 1930 az 15.3.1939 do jednotivych státu" [note that some of the c's are "happy", they have smiles over them, but I haven't figured out how to get ASCII/IBM to display them] Clearly, they show exports of arms and ammunition, but the numbers do not entirely match. I assume one is sales and the other is deliveries. Can someone please help me and tell me which is which? Or am I missing something completely? Many thanks Leland
Hi Leland, "Zahranicni dodávky zbraní a munice Zbrojovky Brno" is 'Export sales of firearms and ammunition by Zbrojovka Brno'. "Seznam válecného materiálu, dodaného v letch 1930 az 15.3.1939 do jednotivych státu" is 'List of military materiel sold from 1930 to March 15, 1939 sorted by destination country.' Jirka
Hi Jirka, Wow! That shows the danger of amateur do-it-yourself translation. An online dictionary defined "dodávky" as deliveries, rather than sales. The distinction is an important one, and I almost made a terrible mistake. Many, many thanks Lee
Hi Lee, "dodávky" indeed means "deliveries". Sometimes "deliveries" and "sales" may in effect mean the same thing (you deliver your product = you sell it) and Jirka may not have realized that the distinction is important in this case. So, here it goes word for word: "Zahraniční dodávky zbraní a munice Zbrojovky Brno" - "Foreign deliveries of weapons and ammunition of (made by) Zbrojovka Brno." "Seznam válečného materiálu, dodaného v letech 1930 až 15. 3. 1939 do jednotlivých států" - "A list of war material delivered from 1930 through March 15, 1939 to individual countries." Dana
Hi Dana, Many thanks for clearing that up. You are right, often sale = deliveries. However, in large international sales, deliveries can run over several years, and that was the situation here. The tables are back to making sense again. Thanks again for your help. Lee
Lee, The problem here is that ASCII fonts do not have the "happy c" or "č." Since ASCII relies on an 8-bit encoding, there just aren't enough available encodings to fill all the needs of the European diacritical characters. If you are using Windows, you can install the Czech character set as described by Dana and Maarten on the topic "Character Language Code" http://www.myczechrepublic.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=406 or, more archaically, use the Character Map from the Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools menu on the PC (I recommend the first solution, unless you only have a very limited need for extended characters).
Sova, Thank you. That works. Now I can use that online dictionary. A big help. It's always nice being a bit less ignorant today than I was yesterday. Lee
