Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I was watching DS9 with Swedish subtitles on, and in a particular scene where Ben says "This is Commander Sisko," the subtitles display "Det här är kommendörkapten Sisko." Kommendörkapten looked weird, so I tried to look it up, but I couldn't find it in any online dictionary or translation engine. I did find, however, that while "kommendör" means commander, "kapten" can (apparently) mean either "captain" or "lieutenant."
So...either somebody mistranslated Sisko's rank to Lt.Cmdr., or...the Swedish have a special term for commanders in charge of stations/ports/ships (like "commander-captain")...?
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Well, in "Emissary", he was shown as a Lt. Commander aboard the Saratoga, IIRC. I don't remember if he said his name in those scenes though. Of course... I'm sure you know which episode you were watching
Teh PW
Self Impossed Exile (This Space for rent)
Member # 1203
posted
You know, Battletech has a whole shlue of names for ranks in various languages common in the Battletech universe. So the swedish translation doesn't sound that weird. sounds cool even (and i do know bunch of swedish ALFAN's out there...)
posted
I spoke to a Swedish person after reading this and can confirm that a Kommendörkapten is the equivalent of a Commander in the RN/USN/Starfleet.
As a Lieutenant Commander he should be a Örlogskapten. Just to be confusing, the Sweedish call an officer equating in grade to a Lieutenant in the UK/US/UFP a Kapten.
She told me that:
Fänrik = Midshipman (Ensign to you strange American types) Löjtnant = Sublieutenant (Lt. J.G.) Kapten – Lieutenant Örlogskapten = Lieutenant Commander Kommendörkapten =Commander Kommendör = Captain Kommendör 1st Class is a senior captain
Her brother is sailor of some description, so I guess she was relived that this information was finaly useful!
Edit - forgot to put in that Örlogs = warship. Kapten is captain, but more like the army rank, but the word Sjökapten (= sea captain) is sometimes used. Sweedish is a confusing language.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Aban: Yeah, I don't remember episode names well, but it was mid-2nd season. "Emissary" was the first ep, right?
Pensive: It's a quote from a character in a tabletop RPG session I played in the other night, resulting from rolling a 1 on a Bluff check to bluff some dockyard worker into telling us when the next cargo ship from Singapore was due to arrive. Sort of a had-to-be-there but I was moved to put it here for some reason...
Ginger: Thanks! I already knew those online dictionaries were iffy, but now I know they're crap - they consistently told me kommendör was commander, and had no clue what kommendörkapten was.
Registered: Jul 2005
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-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Yes Kommendörkapten is the second in command in our navy. One of my friends did his service on a mine sweeper, was a cool job apparently, they had good officers on the boat. Once they were going to recover an undetonated torpedo from the sludgy sea bottom, but it was submerged up to its propeller so the winch started pulling them into the sea, had to get a bigger boat.
The swedish language is mostly hard for english-speakers because of three things: you can't pronounce our Å, Ö, U and Y-sounds without a lot of practice (Ä is easy though, just like the A in "at"). Secondly, english-speakers either put the emphasis in the beginning or the end of a word, but we usually put emphasis on both, one after the other. ("KULLE", hill) That's the hardest part for a newcomer. Japanese people are generally very good at understanding our double emphases because they have some of them too. I had a japanese friend over once, she said she thought my cat looked like a little panda, and she said it pAndA ("pun-dA" with english phonetics). She generally spoke perfect swedish, even though she'd only been here for a year.
Thirdly, we build our sentences differently, like "Today walked I into town" or "Without shoes can you NOT eat here."
Here's a quick trick though that you can do to say Y like we do (like in "lycka", happiness/fortune. Also another word with two emphases). Say the english letter E, then shape your lips like you were saying an english O, but keep saying the E. That's our Y.
Ginger: The UK has the most swedes out-of-Sweden in the world, both in the expatriate and tourist category.
[ March 27, 2010, 08:30 AM: Message edited by: Nim ]
Registered: Aug 1999
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
That thirdly thing reminds me of German - "I several days ago to Chicago traveled," for example. And your Swedish Y is much like German Ü from your description.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Actually, I'd still say that swedish sentence builds are more similar to english than german most of the time. "Hooray, I have found a hamburger!" is exactly the same ("Hora, jag har hittat en hamburgare!"), compared to "Dirne, Ich habe eine hamburger gefunden!"
And yes, the Ü is similar to our Y at times, but not all of the time. And germans almost always have emphasis in the beginning of words; "rEInemachefrau" (cleaning woman). Because of the difference in rhythm and melody, we usually can't understand eachother. Same with danes, although that's because danish is so extremely compacted and mumbly in tone. We often use english actually. Danes, norwegians and finns always understand us when we come over, though, because they've been getting our TV for the past fifty years, and because Stockholm-swedish is comparatively dialect-free.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I don't know how Swedish compares to Finnish, but I've heard some spoken Finnish and found the rhythm both alien and beautiful. All I know of Swedish is BORK BORK BORK
Registered: Jul 2005
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