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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

The thing that surprises me the most is the page is in English. I know nearly everyone in Iceland is very fluent in English, but they all speak and read Icelandic too.

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That's very common in smaller countries. The government exists to serve its citizens, not the other way around. When you know a significant minority is less than fluent in your somewhat-obscure local language, providing a translation for that minority is almost a no-brainer.

For example: I am a Dutch citizen. Due to the European Union I have the right to live and work in Iceland. If I were to move there, I'd gain the right to vote in local elections (not national ones, gotta be a citizen for that) - without speaking a word of Icelandic. I'd also have to do taxes, renew my driver's license, and all the other government stuff.

Either I and the thousands like me are going to use Google Translate and screw it up, or they'll just have one of the many bilingual workers provide an official translation. It makes a lot of sense to just translate all official government pages, making an exception for this specific page is probably more work than just translating it too.

Also because Europe, thanks to the frequency of jus sanguine, people like me can be born and raised in Canada but be a citizen of some European country because my parents were born in its predecessor country many decades ago. So I’m eligible to vote (tho I don’t), but minimally speak that language and have spent minimal time there.

I’d also assume Google Translate will do better translating from English to $OtherLanguage than Icelandic to $OtherLanguage. So makes sense to put up a translation into English (or other common language) and make sure it’s correct.

I would tend to guess that the reverse of your assumption about Google Translate is true. The translations from an uncommon language available for training will, by far, outnumber the translations to that language.

But the translations from an uncommon language to a different uncommon language will still be far more rare.

Just guessing, but I imagine that Google Translate probably will, assuming, say, we represent Zapotec to English as f and English to Kannada as g use f ∘ g to infer the translation of Zapotec to Kannada. And saying that, I’m guessing that if the corpus of f⁻¹ is too small, it can probably attempt to infer the gaps from f. But these inferred mappings are probably of lower quality than explicit ones returning us to the original issue.

And man, I really wish someone who actually knew would weigh in on this.

Somewhere around 7% of people in Iceland don't speak Icelandic[1][2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Iceland [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language

Both English and Icelandic versions are available (potentially hidden in the burger menu on mobile): https://island.is/forsetaframbod

When you land on the page, it defaults to Icelandic (it did from me and I'm from Canada): https://island.is/forsetaframbod

However, it does have an "EN" button near the top right. Personally, I think this is as close to a perfect solution as you can get. (Geolocating an IP or something has a whole bunch of problems than just going with your country's official language as a default.)

English has become entrenched as the de facto second official language of Iceland. It's a very depressing trend for the conservation of Icelandic, and the ongoing promotion of English will only continue to exacerbate its decline.

I remember in the 80s when the Nordic TeX Users Group was formed, they did all of their official communications in English so as not to privilege any of the national languages of their membership.

Similarly, English is a standard language in India in part because of the linguistic diversity of the country¹ and being an outsider language means that communications in English don’t privilege any of the indigenous ethnic groups, although it seems that English usage has been dropping in favor of English.

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1. English usage was supposed to have been phased out fifteen years after independence, but the mandated sunset was changed by constitutional amendment in 1963 (apparently a year after the sunset date(!)). India has 22 scheduled languages—i.e., languages receiving constitutional recognition and encouragement—but there are 122 major languages with more than 10,000 speakers. I think India wins the prize for the greatest linguistic diversity among the nations of the world.

Just to be clear, I do see the value in a group like the Nordic TeX Users Group choosing a neutral language for simplicity and fairness. However, it's quite different when a whole nation adopts a new language just because it's the easy option, without considering the repercussions.

This crutch of using English in Iceland not only discourages (and actively prevents) newcomers from learning Icelandic, but it also creates a paradoxical reliance on a language that most immigrants do not speak prior to their arrival. This creates challenges, particularly hindering integration, as Icelandic is (for the time being) still required in most aspects of society. It also threatens the preservation of our language, which is only spoken by around three hundred thousand people.

Would you prefer another second language, or that people refuse fo speak anything but Icelandic?

Jeg snakker norsk, men det er alikevel vanskelig å forstå islandsk!

If it were a matter of choosing another language, Polish might be a more natural choice, as Poles form the largest minority in the country.

But to answer the question, I personally lean towards discouraging English as the default second language and instead focus on strengthening Icelandic. Encouraging everyone to communicate in the native tongue, regardless of proficiency level, can be very effective. That was certainly my experience when my family and I moved to Catalonia.

Norskan er auðlesin, en ég á erfiðara með að skilja talmál!

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