Blog: Kosovo corrections; updates

I can only apologise and promise that the necessary corrections and updates have now been made and will continue to be made at the earliest opportunity. I lacked internet access for so long that the e-mail account that notifications of comments awaiting moderation went to cleared and when I aceessed it again, I had no idea anyone had tried to say anything. It was only today, when I was able to use the new blogger, which shows you in the post list which ones have comments that I found out.

When I did find out, too, it did not make for pretty reading: there were about a dozen corrections - some of them serious - and a dozen more updates. So, I've now been through and accepted all of the comments for publication - in my haste, even one advert, which I don't seem to be able to delete now - and changed or extended the posts where necessary. I'm including guides to the corrections and updates below and publishing this post on both samarkeolog and human rights archaeology.

Understandably, some people found it difficult to be patient, but I hope that these posts and their correspondent corrections and updates make clear that I am sincere in my efforts; put simply, I may be stupid and ignorant, but I'm not a bastard.

Before I list the general mistakes, I wish to highlight the most serious errors that I made:

• first, Bytycci, Poli and Frederic Gernstein (and elsewhere, Kosovar), were kind enough to correct me when I made the grave error of mistranslating the nickname Nazi, short for Nazim or Nazmi, as being a national socialist statement, tag or slogan; and,
• second, although I appear to have got the literal translation of graffiti demanding 'no church' correct, Anonymous, Kosovar and Bytycci corrected my interpretation of the site and of the semantic meaning of the translation, as it was not a protest at the politically-driven construction of an Orthodox church on university land nearby, but at plans to demolish the very school that the graffiti was written on and replace it with a church.

In terms of other corrections and clarifications:

• on Human Rights Archaeology, Eric Gordy turned about a fieldwork note on graffiti in Ferizaj/Urosevac;
• in Decan/Decani WARchild nuanced a poster slogan;
• in Mitrovice/Mitrovica, Anonymous pointed out a mistranslation and/or over-interpretation of the "Motel Mitrovica" sign;
• in Peje/Pec, I was correct in what I said, but, through comments by Artan and Andras, I've worked out that when I identified Bula Zade Mosque by reference to another source, I mislabelled what was the Bath House Mosque and displayed that photograph instead;
• in Prishtine/Pristina, Han_Solo corrected my reading of a Communist monument and Kosovar corrected my mistranslation of the Ministry of Education as the Ministry of Archives; while
  
• in Prizren/Prizren, Anonymous and Vasilevs corrected a translation and in the process identify the site of the Orthodox Archbishopric.

As for updates and extensions:

• in Decan/Decani, Vasilevs opened up the question of whether members of the KLA were "soldiers" or "terrorists" and commented about Albanians (not) being Illyrians [which I had listed as a correction or clarification, but which I felt I ought to move (14/03/07) as some commentators were concerned it might appear that I meant that it was a correction];
• in Ferizaj/Urosevac, he appeared to question the origin of the name of the town; but,
  
• in Gracanice/Gracanica, he translated an inscription on a stone in the wall of the monastery and Marko added to the presentation of the CCCC slogan;
• in Mitrovice/Mitrovica, Anonymous contributed information about the history of the Roma house documented and Arber told an anecdote about the CCCC slogan;
• in Prishtine/Pristina, Bytycci nuanced the reading of a palimpsest of graffiti and Arber and Anonymous confirmed a translation (as did Kosovar), although, with a poor photograph in which a chimney was more prominent than the statue (and presumably in the context of all of the other errors I’ve made), Arber questioned whether the Hotel Victory did have a miniature Statue of Liberty on it (however, I can confirm that it does, if you can expand the photograph enough to see it);
• in Prizren/Prizren, Vasilevs challenged the description of the Albanian League of Prizren, then objected to the inscriptions on statues of Xhevat Berisha and Ismet Jashari; while
  
• I could only offer an inconclusive non-answer to Kate M's question about who the architect of the town's Sinan Pasha Mosque was.