Gimlé

Dorothea Salon responded to my cry for help regarding the issue of translating names. She neatly summarises the possibilities, what approaches are generally available.

And as I was thinking about this I ran across a post in Jonathon Delacour’s weblog.

The post discusses the “lang” HTML attribute, the CSS2 attribute selector and how, when coupled with the “title” HTML attribute you can provide the original language word, the English language translation and semantically correct language information all in one go, along with popups of the translation in the browsers that support it.

So I slapped together a page collecting what little I’ve translated so far of Gylfaginning, using the lang attribute along with the title attribute wherever I felt like it.

For the most part, I think it works. The only thing I’m still thinking about is what it should look like.

But anyway, head off over to the new Gylfaginning webpage and have a gander.

And here’s an short example:

Then Astall says: “Earlier, Niflheimur was made. Many ages before the creation of earth, and there in its middle lies a well named Hvergelmir. From there rivers flow so named: Svöl, Gunnþrá, Fjörm, Fimbulþul, Slíður og Hríð, Sylgur og Ylgur, Víð, Leiftur. Gjöll is the one closest to the gates of Hel.”

Chapter five is proving a tad more difficult, which of course means that the entertainment value of translating it goes up exponentially.

It’ll be up eventually.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.