"Effektiviteten är hög."

Translation: The efficiency is high.

[Mother]

Google translate seems to misunderstand me, but hopefully you can help. It seems that effektiviteten can mean both efficiency and effectiveness, while the terms can be very different (producing more with less resources vs. producing more accurate results). Which is more appropriate for effektiviteten?

[gramphos]

Producing more for less resources or at least have a low waste of resources (or time) in the production.

[mattttw]

that's efficiency

[davidalso]

As far as I can tell, Swedish does not differentiate between these. Another translation with a completely different definition is efficacy: ability to produce the desired result. Perhaps there are adjective that change the translation.

[Bittercress]

I got an almost correct for "Efficiency is high" because I didn't prefix with 'The'. However, I would say that a sentence like "The efficiency is high" is highly unlikely in idiomatic English. More likely would be what I put, or something like "The efficiency [levels/stats] are high". I should also add that I would understand the meaning to work both ways without problem in Swedish. Anyone agree?

[davidalso]

I could see it being equally probable in English, just depending on the context. I wonder, though, if the article is necessary in Swedish, or if "Effektivitet är hög" is also a grammatically correct phrase. Articles drive me nuts with other languages. Sometimes you have to have them for certain words and the one phrase will work for both translations. Sometimes you can make a straight translation and so if you leave it off or if you include it you're slightly changing the phrase. My imperfect solution has been to just do as literal (and plausible) a translation as possible, and then hope that repeated exposure will make the appropriate usages clear. Let us know if you figure it out!

[Arnauti]

No, you can't say Effektivitet är hög in Swedish, so I guess we should allow the version without the in English. (you could always say something like Fabrikens effektivitet är hög, but not just effektivitet)

[davidalso]

Thanks, Arnauti.

[Cubixus]

Is hög connected to höger? high - right?

[devalanteriel]

No, the similarity appears to be a coincidence, in Swedish as well as in English.

[Siipisimppu]

I temporarily forgot the word "efficiency" and wrote "effectivity" instead, and I pressed enter before I noticed the red line below the word "effectivity". So apparently it's not a real word, and now that I'm past that brain fart, I also think "efficiency" is much better than "effectivity".

So my question is, why was my answer accepted as correct?

[devalanteriel]

Efficiency and effectivity are both real words, with different meanings - but they both translate to the same thing in Swedish. You need a better spellchecker. :p

[Siipisimppu]

Huh, nice to know. I guess that "effectivity" isn't American English then, because my computer adds the red line below words such as "colour", "theatre" and "aeroplane", which do not appear in American English either.