Talk:Charcoal pile

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Requested move 5 October 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Procedural close only, since there appears to be consensus to "pause" the RM so further research can be done on the topic. (closed by non-admin page mover) OhKayeSierra (talk) 21:52, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Charcoal pile → Charcoal clamp – English name found in reliable sources. The current name seems to be a mistranslation from the German (this article was translated from the German, and uses German-language sources). See detailed discussion on Commons. HLHJ (talk) 03:18, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Endorse. I'm an admin. If no one has objected to this in the next 7 days, or if there is clear consensus to move, please ping me to do it. - Jmabel | Talk 04:26, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, a belated thought: considering that charcoal kiln redirects here, and we have an article on charcoal burners (people) but not on charcoal retort, a more general article on charcoal burning (conventional term) or charcoal production (more obvious in meaning) might make sense. HLHJ (talk) 05:44, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest pause for more research. Charcoal pile is overwhelmingly the most common phrase in English sources, followed by charcoal heap, then charcoal clamp according to Google Books. However, I'm wondering if there is a difference in meaning. Is a charcoal clamp a specific type of charcoal pile or heap? Or are they alternative words for the same thing?
This article is based on the German Wiki one which is much more comprehensive and technical; the stub was created to link with articles about the Harz mountains where this kind of charcoal burning was an important part of the economy. The term is not mistranslated - see dict.cc. I'm willing to translate the article - give me a few days - and we can then see whether charcoal clamp describes it accurately in which case it should be moved, or whether it forms part of a wider article with a more general term and 'charcoal clamp' becomes a section within it. Bermicourt (talk) 07:26, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
First section ("history") completed. More to follow later.Bermicourt (talk) 13:00, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. As a multilingual reader, who is completely ignorant, I would say don't move it. The article never mentions the word "clamp", so it would be WP:SURPRISEing to have an article called "Charcoal Clamp" when there are no clamps. I'm being deliberately ignorant here, but my first guess would be that it was some kind of scientific process which clamps at a certain temperature etc, essentially a pressure release valve or something like that. It just seems very unlikely that an ignorant Englishman like myself, wondering how to make a fire, would say, oh, let's check up "Charcoal clamp", and then find that the article says nothing at all about clamps of any kind. 84.236.27.182 (talk) 12:46, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Without too much self-reference, I hope for the purposes of this conversation Wiktionary is good enough: it has two etymologies, of which we are concerned with the first, and in that one (from Middle Dutch) we get "clamp" which also then went to Middle Low German "Klampe". so they are cognate. In sense 4 it says "A mass of bricks heaped up to be burned; or of ore for roasting, or of coal coking."...but that is not (as far as I understand it) what this is... it's not a pile of bricks etc a makeshift kiln or whatnot, but the actual pile of wood that will be burned to make charcoal. I know that may be splitting hairs, but as far as I can see, the clamp is the bricks and the pile is the stuff, the wood, that actually gets burned to become charcoal. Again, I am being deliberately naive here, trying to come with fresh eyes as I am intelligent but ignorant which is how I try to put readers first, and it's hard sometimes for people who do know what they're talking about to convey that to the rest of hoi polloi who haven't a clue... I would leave it where it stands, but I am not !voting on it, I did a Gooogle Books check and the few that are relevant are about Roman Britain and so forth... my own view is that this is an archaic or dated term that nobody now uses, but I'm quite happy to be wrong. 84.236.27.182 (talk) 13:11, 5 October 2020 (UTC) WP:STRIKESOCK. -- Tavix (talk) 01:08, 12 October 2020 (UTC) [reply]
Okay, I've translated the full article, but as my knowledge of specialist charcoal-burning terms is limited, it needs work from someone with knowledge of the subject. But the overall construction and operation are clear. Bermicourt (talk) 19:40, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Actually, charcoal pile would appear to be the common term in English-language sources. Charcoal burning wasn't just a German thing. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:24, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest pause as proposer, seconding Bermicourt. See section below. HLHJ (talk) 14:58, 8 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

English terms

Seymour, John (1984). The forgotten crafts (First American ed.). New York. ISBN 0394539567.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

For English terms, it has:

  • charcoal kiln
  • steel ring kiln (portable rings ~1.5m/5ft in diameter, with fitting lid, of sheet metal with closable vents).
  • mare (framework wheelbarrow for carrying 2-4ft-long billets)
  • loo (dialect for of "lee", a windscreen)
  • corrack (a specialized rake)
  • shool (a long-handled shovel)
  • charcoal clamp (structure of billets [the stack, with central chimney], covered with vegetation such as straw or bracken, sealed with earth or ashes)

The books' English-speaking sources for this info seem to be in Sussex and Suffolk. HLHJ (talk) 01:37, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Digital atlas of Traditional Agricultural Practices and Food Processing by Cappers seems to be written by Dutch authors in 2016, the year after this article went up under this name. Just to be quite sure we're not introducing circular reporting, can we find any pre-2015 native-English sources for "charcoal pile"?

I don't recall ever having seen "charcoal pile" in such sources, and orally learning English, I learned the term "charcoal clamp'. I'm sorry I failed to indicate this clearly on the Village Pump, but my "I think this is because... So I think this is a translation error" is my attempting to explain this discrepancy between terms on-wiki and elsewhere. HLHJ (talk) 01:45, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My translation source was the 2004 edition of Langenscheidt's Muret-Sanders Großwörterbuch - their flagship dictionary, but you can find Meiler and Kohlenmeiler translated as 'charcoal pile' as far back as an 1870 technological dictionary, but the term also appears more recently in Wiley's 1995 Encyclopedia of Energy Technology and the Environment. I'm not against moving this to charcoal clamp if that is the recognised technical term, but charcoal pile seems to be entirely valid and possibly more commonplace. However, it may be that the latter is also used in a more general sense and so charcoal clamp would be the better term for what is quite specifically being described here. Bermicourt (talk) 07:09, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds very solid, Bermicourt, exactly the sort of sourcing I wanted. It is entirely possible that I was not raised speaking every dialect of English . It seems both terms are solidly attested, so obviously we need to list both, and charcoal clamp and charcoal pile need to point to the same location. I think my preferred solution would be an article on charcoal-burning in general, discussing both the physical process and the various structures: the earthern clamps/piles, various types of kilns ("ovens" seems to be a term used in parts of the US), tar kilns, and retorts (we don't currently seem to have content on retorts). The basic process is the same in each case, so I'd think individual articles would tend to overlap heavily. However, if we have too much content for a single article, I'd not be opposed to splitting it up. I agree on preferring specific terms where reasonable; I think I'd prefer "charcoal heaps" or some such (for mere storage accumulations) on Commons, to minimize potential confusion. But I'd like to know if any of these terms are hypernyms of the others; is there a generic word for "semi-sealed structure for making charcoal"? HLHJ (talk) 14:56, 8 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Retention of German terminology

The original German terminology from the translation has, in several cases, been retained where the meaning was not abundantly clear. These words are often archaic and not found in modern dictionaries and so keeping the original enables subsequent editors who are expert in the field of historical charcoal burning and Old German to make any improvements necessary. Bermicourt (talk) 15:47, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But why would that be in the least bit appropriate for an article in English? There's nothing in the article to indicate there's anything especially German about charcoal piles. When the article says in Wikipedia's voice "possibly known as 'culm' or 'brusque'; German: Lösche, Stübbe, Stibbe or Gestübe" , there's no indication that it's just a translation uncertainty on your part; rather, it implies there's actual uncertanty about the meaning. It's the "possibly" that caught my eye in the first place: of what does this inform the reader? Perhaps those translation uncertainties might belong in a footnote? --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 16:05, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Because a) the article was originally translated from German Wikipedia and b) if the translation of an old technical word is inaccurate it will be spotted by a subject matter expert or even by me if, later I come across a more accurate term in English. If it's deleted; no-one will ever know what the original German word was so the error may not be picked up. However, I agree that a footnote might be a better way of capturing any uncertainty. Bermicourt (talk) 20:15, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm now looking for English-language sources, since charcoal making is hardly a German specialty. This article, from a quite interesting source on medieval ways (perhaps even a reliable one), has words like "fnarr", "sammel", "flipe", "scrow", and "browns", which seem to be Cumbrian and such, though maybe "fnarr" is just SCA-talk, hard to tell. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 21:46, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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