Friday, April 15, 2011

Answer: Extension of aGoogleADay problem from this week

The problem was pretty simple:  


     What's the name of the telecommunications museum in Seyðisfjörður?  


The only way I could solve this problem was to use the "Translated foreign pages" tool in the Left Hand Panel.  


To get there, you have to click on "More Search Tools" -- then use the "Translated Foreign Pages" tool to search for: 
Seyðisfjörður museum ] 


This will result in a lots of pages in Icelandic which will then be translated to English (or whatever your host language is).  The translation isn't perfect, but the results are easily good enough to look for "museum" in the SERP and find the link to the city's web site (.visitseydisfjordur.com, which is, oddly enough NOT in the .IS top-level domain!)  


There you'll quickly see that the museum is actually called the "Technical Museum of the East," or Tækniminjasafn Austurlands in Icelandic.  


Funny thing though, while the translation works generally pretty well--but it can't quite decipher some of the text.  The translated guess is as follows:   
      The collection area is the oldest ritsímastöð country, 

      the country's oldest vélsmiðja and very noteworthy 
      bryggjuhús from 1881 to 1897.

It's not intentionally funny, but it reads like a joke--you can understand everything except the nouns... 


Still, from what I could gather by doing Image searches, a bryggjuhús is a small house next to the water; a vélsmiðja is a kind of shop; and I have no idea what a ritsímastöð is... maybe a section of the country?  


(Any Icelandic speakers out there want to fill us in?) 


Still searching! 

3 comments:

  1. You don’t need to be an Icelandic speaker to understand the meaning of the words; just use Google:
    - ritsímastöð: telegraphy station (try Google Translate with the two words: ritsíma stöð)
    - vélsmiðja: machine workshop (try Google Translate with the two words: vél smiðja)
    - bryggjuhús: pier house (try Google Translate with the two words: bryggju hús)

    For more English information on the museum see: http://www.tekmus.is/ens/ensumsafn0.htm

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hans is right.. but he has a great trick up his sleeve here: Breaking up the compound word ritsímastöð into "ritsíma" and "stöð" is great... but only if you know how to do that. (I don't!)

    Question back to you Hans--how DID you know to break those words into constituent components?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Daniel, I recognized in bryggjuhús the Dutch words "brug" (bridge) and "huis" (house) so I tried in Google Translate to split up the word in two parts: bryggju hús.
    In vélsmiðja I recognized the Dutch word "smidse" (forge or smithy), so I tried to translate the phrase “vél smiðja”.
    So I decided to use the same trick for the last unknown word. It was a question of trial and error till I found “ritsíma stöð” which Google translated in telegraphy station.
    So it is a little bit of knowledge of my own local language combined with a lot of luck.

    ReplyDelete