Íslenzka.net ~ An Icelandic Journey

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that sometimes it can be useful to just translate news headlines as a way of learning vocabulary and phrases. As a step between that and translating full articles, it’s also fine to just translate the headlines and summary, or just the first paragraph or two of a long article. I’ve done that here with an article from the site Fréttatíminn. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a weekly paper distributed in the Reykjavik area and in Akureyri. One nice thing is that it is also avalable in PDF format, so you can view it offline. Can never have too many Icelandic sources 🙂

Eldur í flösku
Fire in a bottle

Chilipipar er furðulegt fyrirbæri. Eitthvað svo vondur en samt svo dásamlega góður. Þeir sem einu sinni komast á bragðið verða ekki svo auðveldlega settir af leið. Það er því gott að geta gripið í flösku af rótsterkri sósu þegar kitla þarf bragðlaukana aðeins meira en með salti og pipar.

Chili peppers are a strange phenomenon. Something so bad and yet so wonderfully good. Those who develop a taste for it find it hard to stop. So it’s good to be able to grab a bottle of hot sauce when you need to tickle your taste buds with more than just salt and pepper.

In keeping with the tradition of not using many loan words, the BÍN website also suggests sílípipar as an alternate spelling, or even better the word eldpipar 😉

I couldn’t come up with the right translation for settir af leið, I think it’s something like dissuade, or put off?

I also wasn’t sure about rótsterkur. Is rót- just an emphasizer here, so it means very strong? Or is it really related to rót as in root? Or some other obscure meaning? So many uncertainties for me in just a few sentences 🙂

Sterka sósan er fyrirbæri sem finna má í flestum matarhefðum. En þær eru langt frá því að vera allar eins. Allt frá gömlu góðu Tabaskó sósunni, sem í huga margra er samnefnari yfir sterku sósuna, yfir í sósu gerða úr draugapiparnum ógurlega. Sem er svo sterkur að ekki er ráðlagt að handleika hann berhentur. Fæstir kaupa sjálfsagt sósu sem er svo sterk en það er vel þess virði að kynna sér lauslega muninn á tegundum og hefðum. Til dæmis með því að flokka sterku sósurnar mjög svo óvísindalega eftir heimsálfum.

Hot sauce is a phenomenon which can be found in most food cultures. But they are far from being all the same. From good old Tabasco sauce, which in the mind of many is the common term for hot sauce, to sauce made from the terrifying ghost chili, which is so strong that it is inadvisable to handle it bare-handed. Of course few buy sauce that is that strong, but it is well worth familiarizing oneself with the difference between various types and customs. For example by classifying hot sauces most unscientifically by continent.

The phrase allt frá…yfir í as from…to was an interesting one to come across, I can’t remember seeing it before. Same with það er vel þess virði. Also of note is munurinn á + dative – the difference between.

I couldn’t come up with the right word for samnefnari here. I think I understand what it means by itself, but the correct English word in this context is escaping me.

Read more about the wicked Ghost Chili…(someone needs to work on an Icelandic version of that page).

It’s a very long article, but worth trying to read through, just to see how much you can pick up 🙂

furðu·legur adj                strange, amazing
fyrir·bæri n                   phenomenon
dásam·legur adj                wonderful, admirable, glorious
kitla v (acc)                  tickle
bragð·laukur m                 taste bud
sam·nefnari m                  common denominator
ráðleggja v                    advise
handleika v                    handle
munur m                        difference
tegund f                       type, kind
vísinda·legur adj              scientific
heims·álfa f                   continent