From: adam callahan
Message: 1800
Date: 2002-03-11
> Hello Keth,__________________________________________________
>
> > I think Haukur has a very good point here.
> > As I understand it, he is saying that Americans
> (or others of the
> > English tongue), when the want to find an
> Icelandic Or Old Norse
> > word, simply scan the dictionary
>
> That's not what I was saying :-) Or at least I
> didn't
> mean that those sorts of translations were
> especially
> characteristic of English speakers. The same thing
> can
> happen to speakers of any language with insufficient
> knowledge of the language they are trying to
> translate
> into.
>
> Here's one story.
>
> An Icelander wants to translate "Hver � �ennan
> frakka?"
> (Who has this coat?) into English. He uses the
> dictionary:
>
> hver - hot spring
> � - river
> �essi - this
> frakki - Frenchman
>
> So he gets
>
> "Hot spring river this Frenchman?"
>
> which is not very helpful.
>
> Dictionaries are useful tools but one has to know
> how
> to use them. They are not sufficient for translating
> sentences into languages one doesn't know. There is
> not a
> one-to-one correspondance between the words and
> grammar
> of any two languages.
>
> Kve�ja,
> Haukur
>
>