# Icelandic: af ; sinnt



## LurkingFox

Hi, I'm trying to translate a news article about a horse event and rider. Here's the part i'm having problems with: 

*Sigurður Sigmundsson hlaut heiðursverðlaun LH að þessu sinni. Siggi í  Syðra, eins og hann er oft kallaður, hefur um áratugaskeið sinnt fréttum  að hestamennsku og hrossarækt af miklum metnaði og áhuga.*

_My attempt at translating: Sigurður Sigmundsson received a honorific prize from LH (Landsmót horse festival in this context) this time. Siggi from the South, as he is often called, has for over a decade **sinnt** the news about horsemanship and horsebreeding *af* ambition and interest. _

I don't understand the meaning of "af" in this context. Were the news of interest? But whose ambition is it? Is it "ambitious news"? I think I'm definitely missing something. Doesn't help that I don't understand "sinnt" here. 

Thank you for your help!


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## Silver_Biscuit

Are you sure that Sigurður is a competitive rider? It looks like he's a journalist specialising in horse-related news, which would explain why he won an honorary award rather than an actual award.

_Sinna_ means 'handle', 'see to', etc. _Af _means 'with' in this context. I wouldn't translate _metnaður_ as 'ambition' in this sentence (you might need a better dictionary)*. My quick translation (needs polishing, but you'll get the idea):

Siggi from the South, as he is often called, has handled news of horsemanship and horsebreeding with great diligence and enthusiasm for decades.

* To explain, I think it probably means the ambition to do well, rather than ambition as we might understand it in English, i.e. ambition to reach a higher position or achieve power/money/success. I see that these things are linked, but I just don't think ambition is quite the right English word for the job. Anyway, _metnaður_ has more than one meaning, but I found a quality definition on Snara, which I guess you don't have yet. I recommend it


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## LurkingFox

Haha, I was looking for "honorary" for ages, thanks. Thank you for the translation. It makes sense. I'm using digicoll.library.wisc.edu/IcelOnline/Search.TEId.html, do you have another one to recommend? (edit: ok I just found "snara.is" you talked about, but I'm not sure how it works. Do you have to subscribe?) 

From my understanding Sigurður is both - he's a rider and has written for horse magazines etc. 

"Sigurður Sigmundsson hlaut heiðursverðlaun LH að þessu sinni. Siggi í  Syðra, eins og hann er oft kallaður, hefur um áratugaskeið sinnt  fréttum að hestamennsku og hrossarækt af miklum metnaði og áhuga. Hann  hefur skrifað fyrir marga miðla, þar á meðal Eiðfaxa. Siggi á eftir  langan feril sinn sem ljósmyndari, gríðarlega mikið og verðmætt safn  ljósmynda sem eru fjársjóður fyrir hestamennskuna. Eiðfaxi óskar Sigga  innilega til hamingju með viðurkenninguna, sem hann er sannarlega vel að  kominn. *
it goes on: 
Siggi Sig (there is no reason t believe that is still not the same person, right?) *eins og flestir þekkja kappann, hlaut hinn eftirsótta titil  "Knapi ársins" á Uppskeruhátíð hestamanna á Broadway í gærkvöldi. Siggi  var tilnefndur til verðlauna í fimm flokkum af sex. Hann varð tvöfaldur  Íslandsmeistari á árinu, sýndi 16 kynbótahross í 1.verðlaun og varð  þriðji í slaktaumatölti á HM í Sviss í sumar. Hann var framarlega í  flestum flokkum móta hér heima og er frábær fyrirmynd."


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## Silver_Biscuit

I found the article you are talking about and Siggi Sig refers to Sigurður *Sigurðar*son, Siggi í Syðra is Sigurður *Sigmunds*son, so yeah it's a different person. It can certainly be confusing with the common names here.

Snara is a subscription site, yes - it's definitely worth it, as is ordabok.is. Digicoll is OK to get started, but its limitations quickly become annoying. Or at least they did for me.


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## Segorian

Silver_Biscuit said:


> I found the article you are talking about and Siggi Sig refers to Sigurður *Sigurðar*son, Siggi í Syðra is Sigurður *Sigmunds*son, so yeah it's a different person. It can certainly be confusing with the common names here.



Yes, the way the article (at least the online version) is written, confusion is possible. Basically, it’s only the title that allows us to conclude with certainty that these are two different men.

Otherwise, there are several points here. First, ‘Siggi í Syðra’ is short for ‘Siggi í Syðra-Langholti’ (Syðra-Langholt being a farm in south Iceland). Second, it is indeed correct to translate _um áratugaskeið_ as ‘for decades’ (rather than ‘for over a decade’). I believe that for most people the expression denotes a period of at least 20 years. Third, the point about the meaning of _metnaður_ is a very good one, because the meaning ‘ambition to do well’ is missing from most Icelandic dictionaries (_kapp_, which is a frequently given meaning, is not quite the same thing), and English-Icelandic dictionaries fail to recognise that ‘metnaður’ is often a better translation of _diligence_ than, for example, ‘ástundun’.


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## LurkingFox

Thank you both! I'm writing the point about "metnaður" in my little vocabulary notebook! ;-)  About the name, re-reading the article, I get now that it was implied they were different people simply because every paragraph is about someone different. Also because anyone reading Eiðfaxi in Icelandic probably knows those people anyway. On the other hand if Icelanders could stop being all called Jón, Einar and Sigurður, that would help me a lot. (What? They don't care? Alright then.)

For Snara, I'm going to look into it. But is it only in Icelandic? Because if so, I'm probably going to wait for a while... Icelandic definitions of Icelandic words won't be too useful to me for some time I'm afraid. I find Digicoll rather good (and it's free!) but it only works one way, so that's really annoying.


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## Alxmrphi

> I find Digicoll rather good (and it's free!) but it only works one way, so that's really annoying.


You have to select 'Entire entry' and put English in there, then it's a bit of guesswork but for most words there will only be a few options and with a few clicks you can get to the correct definition. If you're not ready for Snara, but Digicoll is becoming annoying, you need ordabok.is. It's my favourite of them all and has the most use for someone who can't read Icelandic definitions of Icelandic words. It's the next step up the ladder from Digicoll to Snara.


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## Segorian

LurkingFox said:


> On the other hand if Icelanders could stop being all called Jón, Einar and Sigurður, that would help me a lot. (What? They don't care? Alright then.)



Your prayer has already been heard! According to Statistics Iceland, the five most common male first names were as follows on 1 January 2013 (number of bearers in brackets):

*Jón* (5,324)
*Sigurður* (4,307)
Guðmundur (4,036)
Gunnar (3,181)
Ólafur/Olav (2,819)

*Einar* was sixth with 2,494 bearers. However, the five names most commonly given as first names to Icelandic boys born in 2012 were (number of boys receiving each name in brackets):

Aron (42)
Viktor/Victor (40)
Alexander (38)
*Jón* (37)
Arnar (30).

In this list, *Sigurður* barely makes it into the top ten, and *Einar* has become less popular than Mikael or Róbert. The only reason *Jón* is still relatively common is that it is the most popular first component of double first names (Jón Arnar, Jón Þór, Jón Ingi, etc.) and also exists as the second component (Stefán Jón). On the other hand, very few men are simply called ‘Jón’ nowadays.


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## LurkingFox

@ Segorian: Hope, at last!  
But it's also a question of generations. On the rather small sample of Icelanders I know, I know 3 Jón, who are all in their mid-thirties / fourties. Then I indeed know two younger Jón-something. And while I've only met one Einar, sometimes it feels like everyone I meet is called Einarsson/dóttir... But I'm glad to know I will soon feel like everyone is called Aron instead of Sigurður ;-)


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