(Restos de) Miera

18:55 Jan 22, 2014 

I'm no expert on this, but I did happen to do some research on medicinal resins for an article a couple of years ago (believe it or not!).

15:35 Jan 22, 2014 

Hi Charles - Many thanks for your detailed replies. I hadn't seen your longer message below, which clarifies everything significantly. The typo referred to a link and entry mentioning "gun rosin", which seems to have been omitted from my post when it was submitted. You seem to be something of an expert on all things resinous ... which is fortunate in terms of this translation! Thanks again and all the very best.

15:22 Jan 22, 2014 

By the way, "crude turpentine" in the passage you've quoted is exactly this, the oleo-resin exuded by pine trees. Rosin is the "resinous constituent" of it, left after distillation. If you want, you could use "crude turpentine" here; it would be correct.

15:19 Jan 22, 2014 

No, rosin is not a typo; it's a hard, brittle substance called colofonia in Spanish, familiar to violinists, who use it to help their bows grip the strings. It's derived from resin (usually pine resin), by heating it to vaporise the terpenes, which are the main component of turpentine (aguarrás). Gum rosin and rosin are the same thing, I think.

So the miera they're talking about here is not rosin, which is a derivative of pine resin; this miera is the solidified natural resin itself, just as it comes out of the tree and is left lying on the forest floor. But apart from turpentine (which is ambiguous and normally means the liquid derivative of resin, as I've said), I don't think there's another English term for natural pine resin, which is, I'm sure, what "miera" means here.

15:06 Jan 22, 2014 

Hi again folks,

Thanks very much for these suggestions. Yes, the "peguera" is a pitch-making construction, sometimes referred to in English as a "tar oven". On "miera", there seems to be some references to miera as "gum rosin" (it's probably a typo in the abstract below) and I wondered whether these references might help nail the precise translation:

Rosin is the resinous constituent of the oleo-resin exuded by various species of pine, known in commerce as crude turpentine. The separation of the oleo-resin into the essential oil (spirit of turpentine) and common rosin is accomplished by distillation in large copper stills.

http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=ES19980...

...P.C: Miera. Colofonia de miera (Gun Rosin). Colofonia de madera (Wood Rosin). Colofonia de Tall-oil (Tall-oil Rosin). Aguarras. Aguarras al sulfato (Crude Sulfate Turpentine) o CST.

http://www.interempresas.net/Graphics-Arts/Articles/41228-Th...

Thus the 'gum rosin' (miera Rosin) has increased its cost in the first quarter of 2010 in about 85%, 300% since 2004.

14:49 Jan 22, 2014 

Thanks for the clarification.

14:33 Jan 22, 2014 

No, despite the apparent resemblance, they're quite separate and not even related etymologically. "Miera" comes from Latin [pix] mera 'pure pitch', and (as I've said) refers to two kinds of oily resin, one from a juniper and the other from pines. Myrrh (mirra in Sp) comes from Greek μύρρα via Latin myrrha and means the resin from a particular Arabian/African tree, Commiphora myrrha, known as the common myrrh or gum myrrh. It's not pine resin.

"Peguera" means the process of making pitch (pez), or a hollow in which you burn pine wood to extract tar and pitch; the person who does it, a maker of pitch, is called a "peguero".

13:52 Jan 22, 2014 

Isn't this myrrh? That's pine resin, though the dictionary says mirra.

13:47 Jan 22, 2014 

I'm not clear what a peguera is, even after reading the Wikipedia article from which the text has been lifted.

12:59 Jan 22, 2014 

MIERA, Miera or miera? Could it be referring to clay/adobe taken from the river Miera? If you included your several possibilities that may give us a starter.