"De säger att man aldrig ska torka tårar utan handskar."
Translation:They say that one should never wipe tears without gloves.
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"Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar" is the title of a triology by Jonas Gardell about the aids epidemic in Sweden during the 80:s.
1949
That's such an amazing mini-serie / movie-trilogy. A must see <3 I'm so glad that duolingo talks about it (never saw that sentences since I began swedish a few years ago !)
Why does 'ska' mean 'should' rather than 'will' here? I guess it's because of the indefinite subject 'man', but is there more to say?
ska is a very versatile word, and occasionally, only contextual clues will dictate translation. This is probably one such case. There's simply no way a native Swedish speaker would mistake ska to mean "will" here.
Is that because of the books? I couldn't figure out what the sentence was supposed to mean. I ended up going with will, thinking perhaps it was an idiomatic expression related to making someone happy. I sure was off target! :)
American english language users prefer to use should but in G.B shall is used very much instead
I automatically said "gloves on", because the inference is that you would be wearing them.
That's fair - I'll add that. Please note that, strictly speaking, "gloves on" corresponds better to handskar på (sig).
There's a rule called BIFF which states that inte goes before the finite verb in subclauses. The rule's a bit broader than that, though - it applies to other disjuncts as well, for instance aldrig.
I'm afraid I know no such list, but it should apply to most if not all disjuncts (satsadverbial).
What would be wrong in the meaning if we just put...the...before...tears...
I think that if we were translating directly that you could be correct with this translation. This comes from the context of a book where a nurse wipes away the tears of a man who is dying of AIDS. I think that in the context, 'drying' would be less correct than 'wiping.' Probably more importantly however is that the book was made into a TV mini-series with English translation, and the translation of the title is "Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves." Thus we wipe.