Swedish (Mis)Translations
Issue 10: Puzzles Section | author: Simi Hellsten
Simi Hellsten, third-year MMath student at the University of Oxford, presents a problem about mistranslations to Swedish.
Swedish is a North Germanic language, and an official language of Sweden. It is spoken natively by around 10 million people.
Thomas is learning Swedish. On one particular test, he was given 14 English sentences to translate into Swedish. Here are the sentences, with his answers in bold.
(1) The boys painted the ceilings on the houses. Pojkarna målade taken på husarna.
(2) The lion pretends. Lejonet låtsas.
(3) The bottle is thrown by the boys. Flaskan kastas av pojkarna.
(4) The girl hopes. Flickan hoppas.
(5) The girl is found in the houses. Flickan hittas i husorna.
(6) The ceilings are painted by Sven. Takarna målas av Sven.
(7) Sven paints the house. Sven målas huset.
(8) The ball is thrown to the dogs. Bollet kastas av hundarna.
(9) The roofs are shaken. Taken skakas.
(10) The lions jump on the roof. Lejonen hoppar på taket.
(11) The dog shakes and breathes in the house. Hunden skakar och andas i huset.
(12) The lion found the jar. Lejonen hittar burken.
(13) The boy throws the bottle. Pojket kastar flaskarna.
(14) The boy threw the balls to the girls. Pojken kastade bollarna till flickorna.
He was marked as getting 7 sentences correct, and 7 incorrect. No sentence had more than two mistakes.
Identify which sentences were incorrect, and give the correct Swedish translations.
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