Icelandish

Pulling some content out of the old site that felt like it should live on, and these make the cut.

For context, I had moved to Iceland in late 2010, spoke no (or very little) Icelandic, and was more or less wholly dependent on Google Translate to help navigate daily life. Things like

…finding an apartment. This was an apartment listing in Reykjavik from late 2010, as rendered by the best machine translation models that Post-2008-Collapse money could buy. There’s a lot to unpack here.

I was so hoping for something in a high testicle

I was so hoping for something in a high testicle

…and getting useful information from the University’s Intranet site

Someone’s been a naughty vice provost of academic affairs

Someone’s been a naughty vice provost of academic affairs

Feels like that one might need some context. The bit in the red circle there is a list of employees whose birthday is today. I think the very literal English translation of the original Icelandic would have been something like “Birthday children of the day”, which I guess has a vague English analog in the phrase “birthday boy” or “birthday girl”. Google Translate clearly went to some avant garde children’s parties that I was not invited to.

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