Almost thirty years ago, some forward looking teachers at Samisk
-videregående skole og reindriftsskole teaching metal work and Northern
-Sámi, decided to create a list of words used in Northern Sámi metal
-work. After almost ten years this resulted in a dictionary database,
-published as the book
-"Mekanihkkársánit :
-Mekanikerord = Mekaanisen alan sanasto = Mechanic's words" in
-1999. The
-story of this
-work is available from the pen of Svein Lund, one of the leading
-actors behind this effort. They even got the dictionary approved by
-the Sámi Language Council as the recommended metal work words to use.
-
-
Fast forward twenty years, I came across this work when I recently
-became interested in metal work, and started watching educational and
-funny videos on the topic, like the ones from
-mrpete222
-and This
-Old Tony. But they all talk English, but I wanted to know what
-the tools and techniques they used were called in Norwegian. Trying
-to track down a good dictionary from English to Norwegian, after much
-searching, I came across the database of words created
-almost thirty years ago, with translations into English, Norwegian,
-Northern Sámi, Swedish and Finnish. This gave me a lot of the
-Norwegian phrases I had been looking for. To make it easier for the
-next person trying to track down a good Norwegian dictionary for the
-metal worker, and because I knew the person behind the database from
-my Skolelinux / Debian Edu days, I decided to ask if the database
-could be released to the public without any usage limitations, in
-other words as a Creative Commons licensed data set. And happily,
-after consulting with the Sámi Parliament of Norway, the database is
-now available with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
-license from
-my gitlab
-repository.
-
-
The dictionary entries look slightly different, depending on the
-language in focus. This is the same entry in the different editions.
-
-
English
-
-
-
- - lathe
-
- dreiebenk (nb) várve, várvenbeaŋka, jorahanbeaŋka, vátnanbeaŋka (se) svarv (sv) sorvi (fi)
-
-
-
Norwegian
-
-
-
- - dreiebenk
-
- lathe (en) várve, várvenbeaŋka, jorahanbeaŋka,
- vátnanbeaŋka (se) svarv (sv) sorvi (fi)
(nb): sponskjærande bearbeidingsmaskin der ein med
- skjæreverktøy lausgjør spon frå eit roterande
- arbetsstykke
-
-
-
Northern Sámi
-
-
-
- - várve, várvenbeaŋka, jorahanbeaŋka, vátnanbeaŋka
-
- dreiebenk (nb) lathe (en) svarv (sv) sorvi (fi)
(se): mašiidna mainna čuohppá vuolahasaid jorri
- bargoávdnasis
(nb): sponskjærande bearbeidingsmaskin der ein med
- skjæreverktøy lausgjør spon frå eit roterande
- arbetsstykke
-
-
-
The database included term description in both Norwegian and
-Northern Sámi, but not English. Because of this, the Northern Sámi
-edition include both descriptions, the Norwegian edition include the
-Norwegian description and the English edition lack a descripiton.
-
-
Once the database was available without any usage restrictions, and
-armed with my experience in publishing books, I decided to publish a
-Norwegian/English dictionary as a book using the database, to make the
-data set available also on paper and as an ebook. Further into the
-project, it occurred to me that I could just as easily make an English
-dictionary, and talking to Svein and concluding that it was within
-reach, I decided to make a Northern Sámi dictionary too.
-
-
Thus I suddenly find myself publishing a Northern Sámi dictionary,
-even though I do not understand the language myself. I hope it will
-be well received, and can help revive the impressive work done almost
-thirty years ago to document the vocabulary of metal workers. If I
-get some help, I might even extend it with some of the words I find
-missing, like collet, rotary broach, carbide, knurler, arbor press and
-others. But the first edition build from a lightly edited version of
-the original database, with no new entries added. If you would like
-to check it out, visit
-my list of published
-books and consider
-buying
-a paper or ebook copy from lulu.com. The paper edition is only
-available in hardcover to increase its durability in the workshop.
-
-
I am very happy to report that in the process, and thanks to help
-from both Svein Lund and Børre Gaup who understand the language, the
-docbook tools I use to create books, dblatex and docbook-xsl, now
-include support for Northern Sámi. Before I started, these lacked the
-needed locale settings for this language, but now the patches are
-included upstream.
-
-
As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
-
