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16:35 Jun 4, 2011
Spanish to English translations [PRO] Tech/Engineering - Agriculture / history of cacao in Cuba
Spanish term or phrase:dedera
Desde centurias pasadas, la cultura del cacao ha sido transmitida de generación a generación, gracias a los campesinos cacaoteros, una suerte de tesoros humanos vivientes, que son maestros en la siembra, recolección y en la extracción del grano con las ***dederas***, así como en el uso de las gavetas para secarlo, en la utilización de la caja de fermentación, en el manejo del rebote y en las habilidades centenarias para la selección de las variedades.
I've come back to this question after a very busy day, and I'm still not ready to post an answer. I do hope you manage to get some help from the client / author, as it all seems rather contradictory.
The text is indeed informal and not written by a specialist, but (s)he uses technical terms...
I will also ask the client, who might be able to check with the author, and will let you know.
your question makes me wonder what exactly the text means by "extracción del grano". Until now I thought it meant "opening up the cocoa pod to get at the beans" but now I realize it's not the same thing! So, I add another question to yours: what are they doing when they are "extracting" the beans? --- you can see the beans inside the pod in transverse section in the third photo as you scroll down the Wikipedia entry for cacao, here http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacao
I support your view that the text is best interpreted loosely. In the "technical" texts I have translated there are some which are written with technical precision by a technical person and some which are written with a "layman's" approach which is quite different from the technical one and does not attempt to be precise, just to give an idea of the process. It seems to me the author here is a "lay person" otherwise the text would say "de los granos" instead of "del grano".
Do you think 'dederas' refers to the tapping? I'm doubtful, finger tapping helps judge ripeness, as one does with watermelon, and it says 'extracción del grano con las dederas'. Of course, there may be an error in the source text; it's very strange that none of us should have found anything.
La recolección es una de las fases más importantes, se debe hacer la identificación de las mazorcas maduras. Este estado se conoce por los cambios de coloración externa, que varia dependiendo del tipo o variedad. Este cambio de color puede ser muy ligero y se corre con el riesgo de no cosechar a tiempo mazorcas que han alcanzado su plena madurez. Ante este importante detalle, muchos recolectores cosechan las mazorcas que se encuentran en las partes bajas del árbol, basados en el sonido que emiten estas cuando son golpeadas con los dedos. El punto óptimo de recolección se produce cuando las variedades de fruto rojo han tomado un color anaranjado-bermellón y los de fruta amarilla un color amarillo-verdoso.
and I think it may be similar to the Valencian/Catalan "canut". The word is derived from “cane” and the suffix “ut” or “u”, representing the Latin “orem” and the French “eur”. It is a sort of piece of cane (reed), used to make a canut (small cane), which is a small wooden pipe which is filled (which would be used in this case to remove the cocoa grains) with things, for example coins by market traders or seed for sowing. It can also be made of cloth woven with the aid of the cane. However, this is merely conjecture on my part so am not offering it as a solution... it would be a sort of finger-shaped cloth sleeve.
Whatever they are, they're made of cloth, apparently:
Así se encuentran en la Ciudad Primada de Cuba, costumbres y tradiciones ya perdidas en países productores del grano como Venezuela, Colombia y Brasil. Sus campesinos continúan utilizando las gavetas de madera para el secado, las cajas de fermentación y las dederas de tela para extraer los granos de las mazorcas; y su chorote, típico de la impronta cultural de la zona, se elabora, según la tradición, con cacao, leche de coco y harina de yuca o maíz, para hacer un delicioso chocolate espeso, nutritivo y vigorizante, que en mucho se asemeja al de los mayas legendarios.
Due to the order in which the operations are described, the text appears to be referring to the opening of the pod, although I don't know why "grano" is in the singular, since there are a number of cocoa beans in each pod. According to Wikipedia, the pod is opened "typically with a machete" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_bean
However the text could also be referring to the removal of the shell from the individual beans. In this reference they say the beans are "shattered to separate the bean from the shell" http://www.bettys.co.uk/worlds-finest.aspx
The translation workplace 
