A hollow whodunnit that gets lost in translation

If Swedish idioms are translated literally - "I knew that Rogga Lundberg wasn't anything you'd want to hang in the Christmas tree" - there is no way the English reader can know whether [Erik] is a fond user of popular sayings or an eccentric speaker of gobbledegook. In Swedish, y...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIndependent (London, England : 1986)
Main Author Soutar, Jethro
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 02.07.2015
Subjects
Caulfield, Holden
Novak, Kim
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Summary:If Swedish idioms are translated literally - "I knew that Rogga Lundberg wasn't anything you'd want to hang in the Christmas tree" - there is no way the English reader can know whether [Erik] is a fond user of popular sayings or an eccentric speaker of gobbledegook. In Swedish, you may well tell the time by saying "it's five to half six", but in English this just sounds odd. Throw in an uneven mix of British ("bloody", "geezer"), American ("recess", "Chinese checkers") and who-knows-what ("I'm a Tarzan with omelettes"), and reading The Summer of [Kim Novak] is enough to give you vertigo.
ISSN:0951-9467