{"id":2804,"date":"2013-11-25T15:01:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T15:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/?p=2804"},"modified":"2013-11-26T10:49:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T10:49:31","slug":"ice-is-news-in-iceland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2013\/11\/25\/ice-is-news-in-iceland\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice is news in Iceland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"news003\"<\/a>Continuing on the November theme: news and how to read them in Icelandic. It’s a sad fact that the web translators invariably fail to translate Icelandic for the same reasons a language learner does: the complex declensions, homonyms, freely used proverbs (some of which can be as old as to be Medieval), loan words, unusual and complicated sentence structure that’s used to say something in as compact form as possible… reading the news in Icelandic is a trained skill even for the natives.<\/p>\n

In all fairness you don’t have to read the news in Icelandic. Iceland is a tiny little country in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and has very small weight in the world matters unless it’s another sub-glacial volcano about to go BOOM on your aerial traffic*. However, to understand life here better and to see how some things presented in the foreign news aren’t quite as black and white as they’re made to sound like it’s good to be able to get to the source of them. Sometimes a few basic pieces of information are all you need to call out hoaxes, even!<\/p>\n

Let’s look at Monday’s news and what’s so tricky about reading them, in other words what you need to look out for.<\/p>\n

\"cabin160\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Flugh\u00e1lka v\u00ed\u00f0svegar um landi\u00f0<\/em><\/strong> (link<\/a>). \u00a0The title on its own can be confusing: trying to internet-translate it results in “Flights Icy over the country”. Over the country, ok, something to do with whole Iceland, but what on earth is Flights Ice? Flugh\u00e1lka<\/em> isn’t even in the dictionary!<\/p>\n

By necessity Icelandic has numerous words to describe snow, ice and winter weather in general. These puzzling descriptions can be deciphered by a little bit of imagination: add the mental image of flight and ice together and you’ll get to someone slipping on ice with enough force as to seemingly learning to fly (you can find some examples here<\/a>). Flugh\u00e1lka<\/em>\u00a0happens when weather turns cold suddenly and rain freezes a mirror smooth surface over the roads, which is one of the worst dangers in the winter traffic. Always check road conditions before heading out (link<\/a>)! Today clicking at the map shows f.ex. that all the roads above M\u00fdrdalsj\u00f6kull<\/em> and Vatnaj\u00f6kull<\/em> aren’t in driving condition and that driving over Mosfellshei\u00f0i<\/em> is strictly banned.<\/p>\n

\"trip215\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eru beltin spennt? (= Are the seat belts fastened?) The number on the cross depends on how many people have died in accidents during the year.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here are some word-to-word translations and then the real ones in comparison to show better how Icelandic news try to pack all the information into a very tight package.<\/p>\n

Me\u00f0 su\u00f0austurstr\u00f6ndinni er grei\u00f0f\u00e6rt fyrir utan flugh\u00e1lku \u00e1 milli Kirkjub\u00e6jarklaustur og V\u00edkur.<\/em><\/p>\n

By \/ \u00a0South-west coast \/ \u00a0is \/ \u00a0easily passable \/ \u00a0for \u00a0\/ outside \/ \u00a0flight-ice \/ \u00a0at \/ \u00a0between \u00a0\/ Kirkjub\u00e6jarklaustur \u00a0\/ and \/ \u00a0V\u00edk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By the South-west coast the roads are all in good condition with the exception of dangerously slippery roads in between the towns Kirkjub\u00e6jarklaustur and V\u00edk.<\/p>\n

B\u00faast m\u00e1 vi\u00f0 einhverjum truflunum vegna umfer\u00f0ar vinnuv\u00e9la og v\u00f6rub\u00edla<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To happen \/ may \/ with \/ some \/ trouble \/ because of \/ traffic \/ machines \/ and trucks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Some disturbance on the roads caused by heavy machinery and trucks is to be expected.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another interesting piece of news comes from quite near Reykjav\u00edk: Loka\u00f0 \u00ed Bl\u00e1fj\u00f6llum \u00ed dag<\/em><\/strong> (link<\/a>) (= The Blue Mountains will be closed today)**. It’s a popular downhill skiing area that opened only yesterday, but since Icelandic weather is always Icelandic, skiing season much depends on the day.<\/p>\n

Fyrsti opnunardagur vetrar var \u00ed Bl\u00e1fj\u00f6llum \u00ed g\u00e6r og margt um manninn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The first \/ opening day \/ winter’s \/ was \/ in \/ Bl\u00e1fj\u00f6ll \/ in \/ yesterday \/ and \/ many \/ of \/ men<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The first winter opening day of the Bl\u00e1fj\u00f6ll skiing resort was yesterday and there were lots of people visiting the place.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

“Okay okay! I said I am sorry!” Photo by Helgi Halld\u00f3rsson (link<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

Next I have a small piece of news on criminal activity in Iceland with translations. Try to match the meaning to the separate words to see how the conjugation, compact sentence structure and the unusual order of words works!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kr\u00f6f\u00f0ust \u00feess a\u00f0 f\u00e9laginn yr\u00f0i leystur \u00far haldi <\/em><\/strong>(link<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Demanded that the friend was let go after he had been arrested.<\/p>\n

L\u00f6greglan \u00e1 h\u00f6fu\u00f0borgarsv\u00e6\u00f0inu var k\u00f6llu\u00f0 a\u00f0 fj\u00f6lb\u00fdlish\u00fasi \u00ed austurborginni um eitt leiti\u00f0 \u00ed n\u00f3tt, vegna h\u00e1va\u00f0a fr\u00e1 samkv\u00e6mi. H\u00fasr\u00e1\u00f0andi, sem er kona \u00e1 \u00fer\u00edtugsaldri, lofa\u00f0i a\u00f0 l\u00e6kka \u00ed t\u00e6kjunum og \u00feagga ni\u00f0ur \u00ed gestunum, en \u00feegar \u00fea\u00f0 gekk ekki eftir kom l\u00f6greglan aftur \u00e1 vettvang.<\/em><\/p>\n

The police of the Capital City area were called to an apartment building on a hill in the east Reykjav\u00edk in the night because of a noisy party. The householder, who is a woman in her thirties<\/del>\u00a0twenties, (thank you Stefan for the correction, see the comment below for a valuable piece of information on Icelandic) promised to turn down the apparatuses and quieten the guests, but when this did not happen the police came back to the site.<\/p>\n

\u00de\u00e1 ba\u00f0 h\u00fasr\u00e1\u00f0andi um a\u00f0sto\u00f0 vi\u00f0 a\u00f0 koma gestunum \u00fat. \u00deegar \u00fev\u00ed var loki\u00f0 og l\u00f6greglumenn komu aftur \u00fat, haf\u00f0i einn gestanna girt ni\u00f0ur um sig og sat berrassa\u00f0ur \u00e1 v\u00e9larhl\u00edf l\u00f6greglub\u00edlsins.<\/em><\/p>\n

This time the householder asked for help in removing the guests (from her apartment). When that was done and the police came back outside had one of the guests dropped their pants and sat bare-arsed on the bonnet of the police car.<\/p>\n

Hann veitti mikinn m\u00f3t\u00fer\u00f3a vi\u00f0 handt\u00f6kuna, en var vista\u00f0ur \u00ed fangageymslu. Nokkrir gestanna komu nokkru s\u00ed\u00f0ar \u00e1 l\u00f6greglust\u00f6\u00f0ina vi\u00f0 Hverfisg\u00f6tu og kr\u00f6f\u00f0ust \u00feess a\u00f0 f\u00e1 manninn lausan, og var nokku\u00f0 \u00f3n\u00e6\u00f0i af \u00feeim \u00fear, segir \u00ed skeyti fr\u00e1 l\u00f6greglunni.<\/em><\/p>\n

He gave a lot of resistance when arrested but was regardless filed into the lockup. Some of the guests came a little later to the police station at Hverfisgata and demanded that the man be freed, and caused some disturbance there, reads the report from the police.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hulda078\"<\/a>* The volcanoes have been relatively quiet lately. Katla is always rumbling a little and is actually a bit overdue her usual eruption schedule, as is Hekla. There are several volcanoes below Vatnaj\u00f6kull that are shaking a bit every now and then but nothing especially alarming is going on at the moment. If you’d like to follow closely on the Icelandic volcanoes’ daily life I warmly recommend the Iceland geology blog by J\u00f3n Fr\u00edmann (link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

**Hulda’s notice to Tolkien fans: we have not yet found any dwarf-, hobbit- or dragon activity anywhere near the area. These may not be the Blue Mountains you’re looking for.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Continuing on the November theme: news and how to read them in Icelandic. It’s a sad fact that the web translators invariably fail to translate Icelandic for the same reasons a language learner does: the complex declensions, homonyms, freely used proverbs (some of which can be as old as to be Medieval), loan words, unusual…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":2810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[90791,91379],"tags":[91405,91398,91386,10341,91391,91392,91387,91396,91402,169],"class_list":["post-2804","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-icelandic-culture","category-icelandic-customs","tag-advanced","tag-driving-in-iceland","tag-icelandic-lessons","tag-intermediate","tag-living-in-iceland-info","tag-post-full-of-links","tag-sample-of-icelandic","tag-so-icelandic","tag-volcanoes","tag-weather"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2804"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2818,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2804\/revisions\/2818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}