It seems that the Danes are making an animated feature movie of the most unlikely book imaginable: The Trip To Saturn (Rejsen Til Saturn), an odd little satiric comic strip from the seventies.
Despite being mostly in English, the trailer is clearly aimed at a Danish audience, and I think you have to be Danish to get it or find it funny. But then again, maybe not, and it looks cool.
Near the end he says "det kan kun gå galt". It means "it can only go wrong", and it's a Danish expression similar to "what's the worst that can happen?" Except of course in this context it's expected to be taken more literally, as a joke.
Looks great, hope I get to see it. It was mentioned not long ago that Danes are somewhat pessimistic, no? This trailer sure makes that point clear! :-))
ReplyDeleteWhile the trailer was downloading, I tried to translate the notes appearing on the Post-It. Some of those came to make sense:
Husk tømme lokum =
Remember to empty the toilet(?)
Fjern brugte flasker =
Remove empty bottles
Husk at hente ØL =
Remember to get BEER
but "Fjern spindel-væv", "HASTER! lap iltslange", "Husk at at vende toastne" and "Husk at lufte ud" retained their secrets. Did I fail to decipher the writing, or perhaps online dictionaries have only limited vocabulary? Or is it that the language is not so obvious?
Electronic translation is embryonic.
ReplyDeleteHere you go.
"Remove cob webs."
"Urgent! Repair oxygen pipe."
"Remember to turn over the toast."
"Remember to air out."
Thanks for your insights. It's really funny, now that I have the translations, to see how all the clues were right in front of me and I didn't connect the dots. "Spindel" was unknown in Danish, but came out as spider in Swedish, yet I didn't think of making network (what I got for væv) into web, and so forth...
ReplyDeleteMind you, this Germanic habit of concatenating words ("ilt-slange") doesn't help, unless you have a good basic vocabulary to see the "join".
But still, "toasten" came up empty, while I suspect it is simply plural for toast. And "lap" was unknown too. Embryonic is the right word indeed, but it has been so for over 20 years. Makes you wonder if this will ever mature?
Amusing exercise anyway.
Indeed.
ReplyDelete"Toasten" is a bit of a cheat, because it's the combination of an English word with Danish grammar. The correct Danish word for toast is "risted brød" (toasted bread).
Speaking of things Danish, I love this.
ReplyDeletehe, it looks very funny!
ReplyDeleteRegarding concatenating words, in Danish there is a whole lot of difference if you say "bedstemorboller" or "bedstemor boller". While the first word will be bread done by your grandmother, the second will mean grandma has sex, so always be sure if you concatenate words or not in danish!
(Word 95 for windows did not have concatenation as a default setting meaning that a whole generation cannot spell in Danish. Word for Mac had it (of course..))
"there is a whole lot of difference if you say "bedstemorboller" or "bedstemor boller". While the first word will be bread done by your grandmother, the second will mean grandma has sex"
ReplyDeleteThat's one subtlety I'm afraid computers are not about to break! :-))
Reminds me of an old ('80-ish) anecdote about computer-assisted translation. The phrase "We want peace", translated to Russian by a Russian program and then translated back to English by an American program, became "We want the world". Ouch.
Electronic translation today?
ReplyDeleteVær hver' vejr værd! [Be prepared for any weather.]
At least, the Dialectizer seems to work decently enough, yo. (Okay, so I have great difficulty decyphering the Hacker version. But I think that's a good sign, precisely.)
"We want the world".
Peace off, you kapitalist yankee dogs!
Sorry for getting all-out danish on you guys earlier. But hey, you know very well that when en rar barbenet araberbarber, plukker rå rabarber i sit arabiske rabarberkvarter, you can expect to eat røget ørred med røræg og rødgrød med fløde for breakfast.
ReplyDelete[Translation: when a strange barefoot arabian barber picks raw rhubarb in his arabian rhubarb neighborhood, you can expect to eat smoked trout with scramppled eggs and red jelly with cream for breakfast.] You can also expect to get your tongue all twisted...
:o)
Indeed.
ReplyDeleteIt's a "nice" barber, though, not strange.
How would you say "a strange barber" then?
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's a correction to bring to the Wikipedia tongue twister page...
"Strange" would be "underlig" eller "mærkelig".
ReplyDelete