'Jag kan inga tala swenska'. Or something like that. Did that sound right?

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted

Fuck yeah, there's people out there whose ability to say something relatively comprehensive in Swedish is worse than mine!
Then again, I'm bloody excellent when it comes to communicating with drunken foreigners in seedy pubs. "Jag vill knulla en kvinna" works like a charm with Swedes while few weeks ago I asked a Welsh guy whether he has many sheep in the family. The only thing that saved me from getting my arse kicked was our mutual love for Shane MacGowan and Morrissey...

“Keats and Yeats may be on your side, but I’m on Morrissey’s. Therefore, you fucking lose.”
~ Oscar Wilde on Morrissey

Your life is a real adventure.

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted

To Malenkaja: In the sentences like : ketä soittaa kitaraa? (whom is playing the quitar) and mies ketä myi maailman ( the man whom sold the world). The latter is even worse cos not only is ketä in the wrong case (sijamuoto) but it's also a wrong pronoun altogether. And yes you should ask: keitä on tulossa (not ketä on tulossa). And of course using ketä in a written language is worse than in speech but I've noticed that people who speak like that tend to write it as well.
I once read in a test paper: jag kan tala sverige.

Edited by Bertolt on 12/31/05 06:10 PM (server time).

In reply to:

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I once read in a test paper: jag kan tala sverige.

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But I know enough Finnish to understand that that is a straight translation, so it makes perfect sense for a Finn to do that error. Ymmärän Suomi.

or David Bowie.

Ymmärrän suomea, would be better.

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted

Nothing to be ashamed of speaking Swedish like a Spansih cow ( a French expression). Just listen to our president and prime minister trying to speak Swedish. My god, they sound like they've never seen a book called Swedish grammar in their entire life. ' jag har en hunden' and stuff like that.

As always in translating there are several choices. A literal translation often leads to silly results especially when a title has more than one word or is taken from a proverbial expression like Hunky Dory. On my list I have tried to keep the assumed meaning of Bowie's album titles in the translation.

Space Oddity - Seltsamkeit im All

The Man Who Sold The World - Der Mann, der die Welt verkaufte

Hunky Dory - Alles bestens

Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - Aufstieg und Fall von Ziggy Stardust und den Spinnen vom Mars (it is "den Spinnen" not "die Spinnen" as suggested here before. The "von" (of) changes the article "die" into the dative "den".)

Aladdin Sane - Aladdin Zurechnungsfähig (The original pun doesn't translate at all)

Diamond Dogs - Hundes aus Diamant

Young Americans - Junge Amerikaner

Station To Station - Von Bahnhof zu Bahnhof

Low - Niedrig

"Heroes" - "Helden"

Lodger - Untermieter

Scary Monsters - Schaurige Monster

Let's Dance - Lass uns tanzen

Tonight - Heute nacht

Never Let Me Down - Lass mich niemals fallen

Black Tie White Noise - Schwarze Krawatte, weißer Krach

Buddha Of Suburbia - Buddha der Vorstadt

1.Outside - 1. Draußen

Earthling - Erdling

hours - Stunden

Heathen - Heide

Reality - Realität

And I want to believe that a light's shining through somehow

Hunde aus Diamant, why not Diamant(en)hunde? Lass mich nie fallen- Betrüge mich nie?
Btw. altho' my Deutsch-Finnisch Wörterbuch isn't the best available, I find it quite strange that I couldn't find the word schaurig (meaning schrecklich?). Is it a common word or colloquial?

Edited by Bertolt on 01/03/06 05:32 AM (server time).

How many languages have you mastered?

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted