+
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.
+
+
