For some time I have been working on a proof that it is mathematically impossible to translate Old Icelandic into English, but I hadn't development my thoughts formally. After recently having some time to develop my theory, I thought today would be a good day to publish it.

The basic premise of the theory is that there are so many possible combinations of meanings in a typical sentence in Old Icelandic, that there is insufficient time to examine each and every possible meaning. For example, let's take a very short sentence, which appeared in yesterday's assignment:

    Er þar búin veisla fríð.

This is an atypically sort sentence, but it will still demonstrate the proof. First, for the word “er,” how many different meanings are there? Checking the University of Wisconsin dictionary (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/IcelOnline/Search.TEId.html), we find four listings for “er”; however, two are the same (the verb form er and the verb vera), so there are really only three possibilities. However, when we check Zoega for each of these items, we find the possibilities increase. For example, vera has two separate entries, the first having 10 entries (though we will subtract the last entry because it gives all the options for vera with a preposition, and there is no preposition in this sentence) and the second 2. “Er” can also be a relative pronoun, with one meaning. Finally, “er” can be a relative particle, with 5 meanings, or a conjunction or adverb with 3 possible meanings. Therefore, totaling up, we get 9 + 2 + 1 + 5 + 3 = 20 possibilities for “er.”

The next word is “þar,” and there are two possibilities.

Búin, on the other hand has 3 references in the above University of Wisconsin dictionary:

    bú

    búa

    búinn

Checking Zoega, we find the following number of entries for each word:

    bú - 5

    búa - 10 minus 2 (eliminate the entry for the prepositions and for the reflexive form)

    búinn - 5

Therefore, 5 + 8 + 5 = 18

Veisla is a much easier calculation to make: one entry with 5 meanings.

Finally, we have fríð, and while the Wisconsin dictionary gives two entries, we can eliminate one, because the first entry has the unaccented vowel, and that's a totally separate word.

Fríð – 3 entries

Therefore, for our sentence

    Er þar búin veisla fríð.

We have 20 x 3 x 18 x 5 x 3 = 16,200.

The first impossibility is holding the 16,200 various meanings in your memory to sort out which possibility is the correct one. Short term memory can hold about 7 items, give or take, which, if my math is correct, is less than 16,200.

Second, is the problem of time. Even if you say that a person can consider each possibility in 5 seconds, that still is going to take 1,350 minutes to consider all the possible meanings the sentence could have.

Longer sentences are going to be multiple times harder. Sentences with prepositions are going to generate even more combinations, because sometimes a preposition has its own meaning and other times the preposition means something only in combination with another word in the sentence. In the latter case, the preposition isn't always next to the word it goes with, so you have to consider each possible word in the sentence that the preposition might go with.

In short, this theory proves mathematically that it is impossible to translate Old Icelandic into English. Please enjoy the rest of your April 1.