English translation: Nativity crib (scenery) / Lenten scene
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Thank you for all you help and information. It's a "general" brochure for tourists so, although tableau might be an appropriate term, I have opted for "carved scene depicting the Passion". It is not a live re-enacted scene but rather a carved work with wooden figures. Thank you again, and Stephen, switch to decaf!! ;-)
Sounds delicious, but any more today and I'll be shaking! With regards to tableau, I think the term would be good if it is something produced by a sculptor, though not really for something manufactured. I am put in mind of those strange shows that were mounted at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries where live models stood stock still (often titillatingly) in what was called a tableau, the purpose of which was to enact key works of Old Master art, or so they claimed.
Thanks, Helen. I'd forgotten that crib IS used in Eng. (or maybe they hadn't got round to making them at my primary schl. before we moved abroad) - solves a lot of ling. problems. I was assuming the sculpted version, too, & hoping 'tableau' would work nonetheless. Coffee was good - even tho' nothing more intoxicating chucked in than a pinch of cinnamon ... AND cocoa. Luxury.
Tableau might well work, Stephen. It doesn't seem to be the live re-enacted version here, though - Lesley can tell us if it is and I've misunderstood. I have presumed it is the sculpted object set up (perhaps in a church) at Christmas or transformed into a Calvary scene at Lent. I understand the re-enactments are indeed popularly derived from mystery plays but to introduce those ideas into this text might be more confusing. In the UK at least these things - the sculpted ones in churches, as well as the more modern manufactured ones, or the ones we made at school (!) - are called nativity cribs. They may be called 'crèches' in the US, I don't know; it is not a term I've ever heard applied in the UK at least for this phenomenon.
Half-coin a Nativity *tableau*? (.. transformed into a tableau for Passiontide....) ' with rumblings of the mystery-play trad. in the implicit background - a poss. vocab resource to dive into (I can't take time off just now)? - mummers / miracle plays, possibly more apt here, *mystery plays* or plain mystery /mysteries - even though this is a static scene, not acted - thence my idea of tableau both for 'pic' and 'frozen action' and the potentially 'vernacular' flavour of posed tableaux (leaving aside 1920s salon past-times). Cf. discussion of 'Pantomimen' @ Alison's entry;
& for a guide to the original context after all, words of explanation for Eng-lang. readers would be appropriate where 'crib mountain' etc. would baffle; the Ger/local terms + en-passant explanation would make sense?
Explanation: Possibly the "Krippenberg" similar to what is also sometimes referred to as a Weihnacjhtsberg, (e.g. in the Erzgebirge) i.e. a plastic depiction of a mountain including a kind of cave with the Nativity scene (and ore-mining activities going on if it is a mechanical one).
I have heard that sometimes this artificial mountain is topped by a depiction of Golgotha, i.e. the scene of Christ's crucifiction, as a theological statement that the Crucifiction is the inevirtable consequence to God being born as a man in Jesus Christ.
In order to bring out the way in which the same item can be used at Christmas and in Lent, I suggest using the names most easily associated with these events.
British Diana Germany Local time: 18:40 Native speaker of: English
Nativity, passion... Slight re-write by way of explanation
Explanation: e.g. 'In time for Lent [if applicable:] / '... for Shrovetide, the site where, over the Christmas season, the Nativity tableau or [italics] Krippe [end itals.] ('crib') stands is transformed into a tableau to mark the period of fasting to come.' [again, if applicable: '... into a tableau of the Passion to mark...' . I'd suggested Passiontide but apparently that marks the LAST two weeks of Lent, so wouldn't be quite accurate).
Stephen Reader Local time: 18:40 Native speaker of: English
The translation workplace 
