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Hi! I was wondering if I could get a little help from native English speakers, please? I have gotten a job to translate a book from Swedish to English.
I know that you shouldn't really translate to your L2, and I've told that to the author. But he has already done that himself with another one of his books, and he had it proof read by a native speaker. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyhow, I will probably not take this job because the pay is unreasonably low, but I thought I should at least translate a couple of pages and measure how much time it takes. And I have to factor in the time it takes for me to do research, so here goes. (I have been trying to google as much as possible, but some things are hard to figure out.)
Oh, and one more thing. When I began translating I quickly realized that I have to choose if I should do this in British or American English. I aim to make it as dialect neutral as possible, but then there are those words where you have to choose either or, like color/colour. So in these cases I will go with AmE. Also, the main character is a 15-year-old, so I will have to use some slang in the dialogues and so, and slang is seldomly dialect neutral.

1. First off is the title of the book. Its Swedish title is Bögjävel, where bög means a male gay person. I think Swedish bög is ruder than English gay. And jävel comes from djävul which means devil. So what expletive do you think I should use in English? "Damn gay" (can you use gay as a noun like this?) or "damn homo" is somewhat close to the original meaning, but I'm not sure native speakers would phrase it like this. How about fucking or fucken as the adjective?
2. A fifteen-year-old, damn gay who lives in Eslöv, southern Sweden.
   I'm wondering about the word fifteen-year-old. How many dashes should I use and where? The original had fifteen written out, but should I use "15" instead?
3. I'm in my senior year at middle school; high school starts in fall.
   These education related words are really difficult to translate. He's in ninth grade, which is the last year of Swedish junior high. After that comes high school, where we do not count grades anymore. Are any of these words wrong or very much associated with either BrE or AmE?
4. It's slightly past three PM and dinner is soon ready.
   In the original version it just said "slightly past three and..." with the number written out. (We don't have words for PM and AM, because it's clear from context which one is meant.) Is it odd to write "three PM"? Should I write "3 PM" instead?
5. She takes a seat next to me and helps herself to one of the pork chops drowned in a light-colored cream sauce.
   The subject here is mom. Can you say that she helps herself to a pork chop, even though she's the one who cooked them? The sauce here is called gräddsås, for which cream sauce is a literal translation. I did however find such a word as "cream sauce" when googling. According to WP, gräddsås is based on cream and fond* or boullion*. *French words, because I can't find English translations. >_<
6. The room has got stale air and I feel like I have to air it out.
   Do you say air out to mean open a window? Because when I google it just seems to mean that you clear a room of people by pulling out a gun.
7. I turn on the telly and lay underneath the warm and moist duvet.
   I thought telly was only used in BrE, but according to Wiktionary it can be either or. Is this true?
8. We've always stuck together.
   This sentence is about the main character and his girl friend always being together. But I feel like the meaning of stick changes when you put it in past tense like this. What do you think?
9. In vain I tried to think about breasts and the little triangle down there, but it did nothing for me.
   Do you understand what the triangle is supposed to mean? Is this odd phrasing in English?

Okay, I'm not a native speaker, but I can tell you that "damn gay" definitely doesn't work -- for multiple reasons.

For one, "gay" is mostly used as an adjective, and when it's used as a noun it's usually in the plural. (I think this is a somewhat general pattern with adjectives used as nouns in English, c.f. "blacks", "whites".) Furthermore, I agree with you that bög is a bit stronger than "gay". Something like "fag" may be a more accurate translation, but I think bög lies somewhere between those two. The "damn" part also feels awkward to me, even if you changed it to like "damned gay", "damn fag", or something similar. "Damn" doesn't compound as smoothly as jävel.

I think you should move away from the idea of translating bög and jävel separately and instead try to come up with a single English word that carries the same connotations. A strong slur like "faggot" might be the most accurate, but that may be considered too risque in the English speaking world -- although that obviously depends on the intended audience of the book.

My English isn't native, but it is the language I'm best at speaking. I live in America.

1. I think the term you want to use is fag or faggot
2. It's fine.
3. I think people can understand what you are saying. "grades" K-12 exists in several English-speaking countries, but some countries use a different system (UK has "forms" 1-6 in secondary school, for example.) Middle school in the US generally spans 6-8.
4. 3 PM is better. You don't have to write PM though, the context of dinner makes it clear that this is in the afternoon. You could then write three as a word. Dinner, however, is not usually eaten at 3 (I eat it at that time, but I'm a weird foreigner). Lunch is eaten around noon and (in the UK) tea is around 4 or 5 (teatime is not that big of a thing in the US. People may snack or something, but the actual tea meal is seen as a stereotypically British thing). Dinner is usually something like 6 or 7.
5. Sounds okay, but just say cream sauce. "light-colored cream sauce" is a mouthful for a minor detail.
6. Air out is best. Clearing a room implies an active thing. This is why it is often used to refer to clearing a room of its people via grenade, flamethrower or etc.
7. Telly is so stereotypically British it wears a bobby (UK slang for police) uniform and a monocle while sipping tea.
8. It sounds like a science fiction story about two people fused into one body. I recommend omitting the verb "stuck", so just "We're always together."
9. The "triangle" is called a cleavage if you're referring to between the breasts. The other one "down there" can be called the vagina, but that sounds formal and clinical. Here's a list of synonyms.

Magbmight be right about it being "too strong". Faggot is pretty strong (although some people, both gay and otherwise, consider it acceptable if and only if its a friend. Some consider it acceptable if a gay person uses it, and I think there's a reclamation movement for the word). Fag is just a shortening, with all of the same considerations. Also, in Britain (but not in other Commonwealth countries), it generally means a bundle of firewood.

Yet damn doesn't work either. You could just soften it to "Gay". Alternatively, you might translate it literally. A book called "The Gay Devil" sounds interesting.

Meanwhile, I'm just wondering why the duvet is moist.

EDIT: actually, here's a few more things if you find them helpful. Some of these might fall more into the editing category than the translation category, I confess.

3. "Senior" usually refers only to the last year of high school, so something with "last year" might be more natural: "I'm in my last year [at / of] middle school; high school starts in (the) fall." ("the" is optional)

4. It's [slightly past / a little past] [3 PM / three in the afternoon] and dinner [will soon be / is almost] ready.

5. It's fine to say she helps herself to the food, although I'd also probably also take out "light-colored"; that's somewhat implied by "cream sauce". (would "gravy" be an appropriate word here?)

6. It's fine, although maybe a touch awkward; it'd probably be more natural to say something like "The air in the room is stale, and I feel like I [have / need] to air it out."

7. Definitely "television" if you're going for AmE. "Telly" is very British-sounding. Again, though: moist??

8. We've always stuck together.
It's OK, although maybe "We've always stuck [with / by] each other" would avoid the mental image that they're literally attached to each other!

mèþru wrote:Faggot is pretty strong (although some people, both gay and otherwise, consider it acceptable if and only if its a friend. Some consider it acceptable if a gay person uses it, and I think there's a reclamation movement for the word). Fag is just a shortening, with all of the same considerations.

"Faggot" definitely has a harsher ring to it than "fag", which (IMD) can be used in compounds like "theatre fag" which don't even necessarily imply homosexuality. And in BE, it's not even always a slur, which I also think blunts its impact somewhat.

American English (specifically, GA) is my native language, so (without really reading all the other responses, which are probably better than mine):

1. "Homo" is more pejorative than "gay". Though you'd use "fucking" with it: "Fucking homo". But this would be someone calling someone else this.
2. I'd just use "faggot" here, though that has a connotation of self-deprecation in this scenario, if someone is describing themselves.
2.5. "Fifteen-year-old person" is fine. ("fifteen-year-old" is one phrasal adjective, so it gets hyphenated together to make it one "unit", whatever the real linguistics terms are). For that phrase, you spell it out; you'd use the numeral form with other things ("1970's-era music")
3. I'd say "last year of middle school"; there are schools in America where middle school goes through 9th grade (that is, the grade where people are 14–15 generally). I'd probably add "I start my first of three years of high school in the fall" to make the cultural note clearer, even if it's not a perfect translation
4. "It's slightly past three in the afternoon, and dinner ready soon". Again, you write out the number, though using the numeral isn't *wrong*, just weirder to me. Also note that "soon" tends to come after "ready", not before (to my ear). In casual speech, people tend to say "in the afternoon" instead of "PM", or just drop it altogether: if you tell someone you'll be having dinner at 3, they'll know you mean the afternoon (though that's an extraordinarily early time for dinner, to me; I think of the earliest you can have dinner as being about 4:30–5)
5. This sentence is perfectly fine to me. You can help yourself to something you cooked, and it doesn't have a negative connotation to me; it just means that you're serving yourself, and probably a larger helping. If you want to sneak the sauce name in, you can say "pork chops drowned in gräddsås, a light-colored cream sauce". Unless it's a culinary plot, I think you're fine with that level of detail. The actual name gives any curious readers the ability to google it.
6. Yes, you can open a window to air out a room. This sentence reads awkwardly to me. I'd probably say "The air in the room has gotten stale; I feel like it needs to be aired out."
7. Telly is British-ism. Here, we say "TV" or "television", probably the former.
7.5. I never remember the lay/lie distinction, so I can't comment on that.
7.75. Moist is a word in English that has a lot of negative connotations for some people. If "damp" is also reasonable, I'd recommend that, instead.
8. Nope, seems fine to me, though I'd rather some additional prepositional phrase or clause: "We've always stuck together through thick and thin" or "We've always stuck together despite our occasional fights" or something like that.
9. This phrasing is perfectly reasonable to me. "Little triangle" isn't particularly a slang word we'd use, so its meaning is a little obfuscated, but given context, it's clear. There's probably a more natural slang term that's just not coming to me right now.

But it sounds like it's supposed to be a strong expression, so "fucking faggot/homo" seems like the most most appropriate translation. Then again, English-speaking audiences may be more sensitive; consider how the Swedish film "Fucking Åmål" became "Show me love" in English.

I think you might also want to consider (or ask the author) how "local" you want it to sound. If part of the appeal is that the story clearly takes place in Sweden (as is decidedly the case with the aforementioned film, for one example) you should be careful not to change too much of things like how the school system works. You could even go as far as to include mildly unusual idioms, and conventions like 24h time, to add a local flavour.

mèþru wrote:Dinner is usually something like 6 or 7.

I would instead say 5 or 6 are typical hours. My college cafeteria served dinner 4:30–6:30; the biggest rush was around 5:30.

[*]The "triangle" is called a cleavage if you're referring to between the breasts. The other one "down there" can be called the vagina, but that sounds formal and clinical. Here's a list of synonyms.[/list]

My assumption was that it was the crotch area; you wouldn't use "down there" for breasts/cleavage.

Qwynegold wrote:

1. First off is the title of the book. Its Swedish title is Bögjävel, where bög means a male gay person. I think Swedish bög is ruder than English gay. And jävel comes from djävul which means devil. So what expletive do you think I should use in English? "Damn gay" (can you use gay as a noun like this?) or "damn homo" is somewhat close to the original meaning, but I'm not sure native speakers would phrase it like this. How about fucking or fucken as the adjective?

It's really hard to guess what the intent of the original is, as a non-speaker. The most direct way to say this would probably be "fucking faggot". But if you call your novel "Fucking Faggot", you are either a) a hip, ironic gay guy writing gay erotica, b) a really angry gay guy being really angry and intentionally trying to offend your audience, or c) a ranting homophobe.
Otherwise, you might want to tone it down a bit. "Gay" is possible but, as noted, not usually used in the singular. IMD, I think "queer" might be a good option - it's traditionally grossly offensive, but it's been "reclaimed" enough that I think a non-offensive interpretation is much easier than with 'faggot'. There's always "homo". A traditional one here, offensive but not as obscenely so as 'faggot', would be "poof" or "poofter". But this sort of slang and how much different words have been reclaimed is going to be very specific to times and places and hard to judge.

"Damn" is a possibility. It's pretty weak, and may come across as ironic. "Goddamn" is full irony, which might be what you're going for. ["Fucking Faggot" is a really angry, offensive title; "Goddamn Gay" is laughing at itself from the start]. "Fucking" is much stronger, but also more obscene. And potentially confusing it that it does have those positive/erotic possibilities that "damn" doesn't. Other swearwords may create interesting effects, but are less natural. Or you could drop it, particularly if you go with a stronger gay-word. "Faggot" is probably stronger than "damn gay".

There's also the article question. Modern titles often don't have them, but older ones usually did, and it does help things look title-y.

[*]A fifteen-year-old, damn gay who lives in Eslöv, southern Sweden.
I'm wondering about the word fifteen-year-old. How many dashes should I use and where?

Oh god, please don't ask! The correct answer for most hyphen-related questions is "nobody knows". (and that's a dash, not a hyphen). "Logically", there should be two hyphens. However, the trend is always toward fewer hyphens. I don't know what 'normal' practice is these days. I'd probably stick with two, just because either option with one looks wrong. The radical option would be zero.

The original had fifteen written out, but should I use "15" instead?

No, IMO.
But a bigger point is: i don't know what a "damn gay" is in this case. It definitely looks wrong here.

[*]I'm in my senior year at middle school; high school starts in fall.
These education related words are really difficult to translate. He's in ninth grade, which is the last year of Swedish junior high. After that comes high school, where we do not count grades anymore. Are any of these words wrong or very much associated with either BrE or AmE?

I have no idea what these words mean. In England we mostly have primary school to 11, then secondary school to 16, then sixth-form college to 18, optionally. Sixth-form colleges are often integrated into secondary schools. Some schools for logistic reasons separate into senior and junior halves, but that's not standardised. Years are numbered from R to 13, but local older systems can be followed informally. [like counting from 1 instead of R, or calling year 12 and year 13 "lower sixth" and "upper sixth".] We don't have "grades" or "junior high"s.

[*]It's slightly past three PM and dinner is soon ready.
In the original version it just said "slightly past three and..." with the number written out. (We don't have words for PM and AM, because it's clear from context which one is meant.) Is it odd to write "three PM"? Should I write "3 PM" instead?

You wouldn't normally add 'PM', unless you're using the voice of someone very predantic. If you want the style of a newsready, for instance, then yes, say 'PM', but ordinary people usually don't. IMD. I'd probably write 'three PM', but I believe style guides would say '3 PM'. Or even '3:00 PM'.
Alternatively, you could say "three in the afternoon" if you wanted to be clear but non-clinical. Similarly, I might say something like "It's a bit after three".
And I don't know about "is soon ready". Do you mean "will be ready soon?" Or do you mean it's a bit after three NOW (at the beginning of the sentence) but the END of the sentence is later and dinner is already ready? Because 'soon' can be used to move the narrative on like that, but it seems weird when the former temporal frame had nothing happen in it!

Incidentally, why the present tense? Is this a default in your language, or an actual stylistic decision? It's quite marked in English (though more common than in the past).

[*]She takes a seat next to me and helps herself to one of the pork chops drowned in a light-colored cream sauce.
The subject here is mom. Can you say that she helps herself to a pork chop, even though she's the one who cooked them?

IMD, yes. It's actually sort of a pleasant, comfy way of phrasing it. The implication is not that she's stealing your pork chop, as "help oneself to" usually implies, but more that she's not standing on ceremony, taking one for herself without waiting for someone to serve. "Takes one of the pork chops" would sound a bit colder, to me.

The sauce here is called gräddsås, for which cream sauce is a literal translation. I did however find such a word as "cream sauce" when googling. According to WP, gräddsås is based on cream and fond* or boullion*. *French words, because I can't find English translations. >_<

I don't know what 'fond' is, but the English for 'bouillon' is 'bouillon'. Or, if you're using it as an ingredient, it can be 'stock'. "Cream sauce" sounds OK to me, though not something familiar - but it may not be the right culinary terminology, which is specialised. Looking it up online, it seems like something some people might call IKEA sauce, because you get it with IKEA swedish meatballs (and nowhere else). One option might actually be to leave it untranslated, as many foodstuffs are - although the diacritics make that uncomfortable here, maybe.

Does it matter that it's light-coloured? If not, leave it out.

[*]The room has got stale air and I feel like I have to air it out.
Do you say air out to mean open a window? Because when I google it just seems to mean that you clear a room of people by pulling out a gun.

I think that's fine, yes. Or maybe just "air it"? Though "the room has got stale air" is a bit clunky to me. "The air in the room is stale" is most natural to me, but if you want the room first there's "the room is filled with stale air" or the like.

[*]I turn on the telly and lay underneath the warm and moist duvet.
I thought telly was only used in BrE, but according to Wiktionary it can be either or. Is this true?

*screams* AAAAHHH! No! No! No!
Oh, sorry, that wasn't about the telly. That was the shiver of automatic disgust at someone laying under a moist duvet.
*takes time to shudder some more and avoid vomiting*
I'm not one of those weird people who hate the word 'moist'. But the threshold of 'moist' is way too high for non-insanitary duvets*. Is there mould growing in his duvet? Has he urinated in his bed? Is it... I don't know, dripping with semen? Even a wet duvet would somehow be better, then he'd probably have had a flooding accident or something, but 'moist'? That's just horrifying.

*Originally wrote 'sanitary duvet'. Hmm. Perhaps now. Damn you, euphemistic "sanitary towels" for ruining a perfectly good word...

[*]We've always stuck together.
This sentence is about the main character and his girl friend always being together. But I feel like the meaning of stick changes when you put it in past tense like this. What do you think?

Works fine. [I think the tense is a bit inelegant, but I'm not sure of a better way with the same meaning, and people would say it, so...]

[*]In vain I tried to think about breasts and the little triangle down there, but it did nothing for me.
Do you understand what the triangle is supposed to mean? Is this odd phrasing in English?[/list]

It's odd, but presumably no more so than in Swedish. The idea of the female groinal area as a triangle is an established trope, albeit not one you'd encounter on a daily basis in colloquial speech... though any time you oh dear gods sorry this pun wasn't intentional but here goes beat about the bush about naming female anatomy you're going to look a little quaint (again, honestly, no pun intended).

Salmoneus wrote:Is it... I don't know, dripping with semen?

I assumed this.

Salmoneus wrote:3:00 PM

I think this is what MLA (Modern Language Association) wants. Then again, I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone when I say I want to strangle the writers of the MLA style guide.

Salmoneus wrote:

[*]A fifteen-year-old, damn gay who lives in Eslöv, southern Sweden.
I'm wondering about the word fifteen-year-old. How many dashes should I use and where?

Oh god, please don't ask! The correct answer for most hyphen-related questions is "nobody knows". (and that's a dash, not a hyphen).

Pedantry alert.

This is a hyphen: -

You use it when joining a series of words together to make a compound modifier. It is also used when joining two words together to form a compound word (until it goes out of style: "fire place" > "fire-place" > "fireplace") such as yo-yo, or sometimes with prefixes, such as co-pilot. It can also be used in typography to split words between lines.

This is an en-dash: –

You use it when indicating a range of numbers, such as 9–5. You also use it in places where you would use a hyphen but one of the words has a space or hyphen in it (to avoid confusion) such as London–New York. You can also use it to indicate connection or contrast, such as McCain–Feingold Act. There are some style guides that apparently are fine with a hyphen instead of an en-dash.

This is an em-dash: —

You use it in dialogue to indicate that someone was cut off: "Don't slam that—!" (as opposed to ellipses, which indicate trailing off), or to cordon off parenthetical phrases that are more parenthetical than would take a comma, but not so parenthetical that they take parentheses; the judgment here is quite subjective—though I'm someone who likes using them a lot. They also are used as indicating censorship or incompleteness sometimes ("Mr. D—"), and apparently occasionally are used to mark dialogue in older books.


I trust this typographer in regards to this, as well. Much moreso than I trust the MLA/APA/whatever.

I was thinking it was urine. The combination of "warm" with "moist" just screams "SOMEONE PEED" to me.

If I just walked into Rorschach test, I don't want to dwell on what my answer says about me...

As noted by my answer to it, I imagined it was just a bit of water, kind of like someone spilled some on it.

Though come to think of it, I don't usually consider damp things to be warm...

I jumped to my conclusion because self-depreciating title about gay protagonist somehow led to self-hate-sex.

Qwynegold wrote:I'm in my senior year at middle school; high school starts in fall
The room has got stale air and I feel like I have to air it out.

Two things I don't think anyone has mentioned:

"in fall" sounds weird to me-- I'd say "in the fall". (Though there are sentences where "in fall" would be OK.) Also I'd write "of middle school" though the "at" is not wrong.

"has got stale air" is unidiomatic to me. Is "The air in the room is stale" too far from the original? Or just remove "got".

Thank you so much for all the replies! I won't respond to everything individually, but I've used suggestions from pretty much everyone. I knew there were gonna be quite many things that native speakers will find odd, but damn...

I think you mean that it’s warm and humid/sticky/sweaty under the duvet, not moist.

There's been many questions about the title of the book, c.f:

Salmoneus wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:

1. First off is the title of the book. Its Swedish title is Bögjävel, where bög means a male gay person. I think Swedish bög is ruder than English gay. And jävel comes from djävul which means devil. So what expletive do you think I should use in English? "Damn gay" (can you use gay as a noun like this?) or "damn homo" is somewhat close to the original meaning, but I'm not sure native speakers would phrase it like this. How about fucking or fucken as the adjective?

It's really hard to guess what the intent of the original is, as a non-speaker. The most direct way to say this would probably be "fucking faggot". But if you call your novel "Fucking Faggot", you are either a) a hip, ironic gay guy writing gay erotica, b) a really angry gay guy being really angry and intentionally trying to offend your audience, or c) a ranting homophobe.
Otherwise, you might want to tone it down a bit. "Gay" is possible but, as noted, not usually used in the singular. IMD, I think "queer" might be a good option - it's traditionally grossly offensive, but it's been "reclaimed" enough that I think a non-offensive interpretation is much easier than with 'faggot'. There's always "homo". A traditional one here, offensive but not as obscenely so as 'faggot', would be "poof" or "poofter". But this sort of slang and how much different words have been reclaimed is going to be very specific to times and places and hard to judge.

My interpretation is that bögjävel is something the main character gets called in school. Later on in the book you get to know that he gets bullied and that people spread rumors. The book starts with "I'm gay. A fifteen-year-old, fucking queer who lives in Eslöv, southern Sweden. My name is Mattias by the way." So this is like his own self-deprecating description of himself.

I think both queer and fag are good suggestions. We'll see which one I finally decide on. I haven't read the whole book yet; but I'm gonna read it before I start translating for real. (If I will take this job.) Further reading might reveal other situations in which this word is used, and which might limit the number of suitable translations.

About the dinner: I think usually lunch here in Sweden is at around 12:00, and dinner at 5-6 PM. So 3 PM is not very usual; I don't know if they've had lunch already or not. In the original text the mom yells "maten är klar!" (the food is ready). I thought that this is unidiomatic in English, so I chose dinner.

mèþru wrote:Telly is so stereotypically British it wears a bobby (UK slang for police) uniform and a monocle while sipping tea.

ROFL In the original text they used the word dumburk, literally "dumb can", so I thought I would use a less usual word. But I have never heard a teenager use the word dumburk, so I'll probably just use the word TV.

mèþru wrote:The "triangle" is called a cleavage if you're referring to between the breasts. The other one "down there" can be called the vagina, but that sounds formal and clinical. Here's a list of synonyms.[/list]

Haha, it does actually refer to the nether regions, so I'll just use some other phrasing. This is not slang actually, but a euphemism. But I think this is also something that a teenager would not say. Right now I've changed the sentence to "In vain I tried to think about breasts and hoo-has, but it did nothing for me." But maybe hoo-ha is not suitable either. How about "breasts and the nether regions"? Or would that not be believable either? And can't nether region also be on a man? I need to make clear that this is about women.

Salmoneus wrote:Incidentally, why the present tense? Is this a default in your language, or an actual stylistic decision? It's quite marked in English (though more common than in the past).

You mean throughout the whole text? The original text is in present tense, although the story takes place during 2005. Is this odd in English language literature?

alynnidalar wrote:5. It's fine to say she helps herself to the food, although I'd also probably also take out "light-colored"; that's somewhat implied by "cream sauce". (would "gravy" be an appropriate word here?)

When I read this I though, "right, gravy! That word also exists! It's a type of gravy, I don't need to specify what gravy it is". But then I looked up gravy on WP and it said that gravy typically contains the meat juice. And gräddsås does not. Maybe I'll just use the term cream sauce even though it might be unfamiliar to readers; Ikea-goers will know it.

I changed the verb, so now the sentence reads: She takes a seat next to me and serves herself one of the pork chops drowned in cream sauce.