Its all in the translation!

A few years ago I spent a year in the USA working with a friend to get a certain project off the ground for which I had skills he required.  It was quite a thing for us as a family to sell up and move to San Antonio Texas, but both my wife and I are the adventurous type so it was fun to say the least!

Beside the culture shock and a complete change in lifestyle we settled in really

 well as did Philip our son. If you’ve ever been to San Antonio you’ll know that the population mix is around 60% Hispanic and 40% Anglo American. It was to say the least a colourful mix and one that we miss even today. Whilst there we made many new friends and it was at a friends house during a ‘Steak out’ (Half a cow beef burgers) B-B-Q that I was told of a little known story involving the Texas Rangers and a Mexican called Pepe Rodriguez.

Pepe it turns out was a bank robber from the old Wild West days in the mid 19^th Century, and quite successful by all accounts!

The story goes that one day Pepe rode over the Rio Grande to rob a bank in El Paso which he successfully did and then rode back into Mexico thinking he was safe from the American law. Well it happened that the Rangers had had enough of Pepe doing this so they rode over the boarder to go and bring him back dead or alive! It happened that after a while the Rangers found him in a cantina and caught him unawares with their guns out, but there was a problem? Pepe didn’t speak English and the Rangers did hot speak Spanish! Fortunately or not as the case turned out the guy behind the bar did and offered to translate for both sides. The Rangers had their guns pointed at Pepe and he was to say the least a little frightened that he would be shot.

The Rangers told Pepe that if he didn’t tell them where the money was hidden they were about to shot him! Now Pepe in fear of his life told the barman that he had hidden the money in behind a loose stone down inside the town’s well. The barman then turned to the Rangers and said, “Pepe thinks you’re a sticking pig and he not afraid to die!” The rest is history as they say!

The point is at the moment in our great hobby there are many different things all happening at the same time and to say it confusing to most would be an understatement! With the advent of PAS and the encouragement to record finds we now face problems with DEFRA! It would be easy to dismiss many important things out of hand because of the said confusion over these issues. We are constantly being bombarded with poor details of the new scheme’s being rolled out on the 3^rd March 2005 and to be fair we seem to have been kept in the dark about how this might affect us all. It seems that the likes of you and I as detectorist are not worthy of knowing how it might impact what we do from week to week?

The NCMD are seemingly in the same boat with DEFRA not replying to questions they were handed virtually two years ago because English Heritage won’t reply to their queries! It seems to me because of lack of information and lack of translation it has left us in a state of limbo not knowing quite which way things are going. This in turn is having a knock on effect with murmuring of some who will stop recording with PAS until the new schemes are translated so we can better understand their implications for everyone involved!

My advice is to wait and see what it really says and then act upon ‘known information, rather than a lot of supposition that is currently being touted around.

I feel that the translation must be clear and concise to all involved so we can each then make our own decision as to the best way forward in the future.

Happy hunting to you all until next time! Pete