"Han står och tittar på dig."
Translation:He is watching you.
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står och [verb], as well as sitter, ligger, etc., are common ways of expressing a continuous action. In other words, they have the same function as "is watching" as opposed to "watches". While you could of course translate them literally in a real-world setting, it makes much more idiomatic sense not to.
springer och is used in a similar construction, but it has a special meaning, or actually two:
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Either it means 'to start to do something' (sometimes with a negative nuance)
E.g. springer och skvallrar – literally 'runs off to tell [on someone]' or springer och gömmer sig 'runs and hides' (or 'runs off to hide') (the latter one does not carry any negative value judgement per se) -
Or it means 'to do something very often' (probably more often than the speaker would like)
E.g. Han springer på toa hela tiden 'He runs to the toilet all the time' e.g. he goes to the toilet more often than expected. Hon springer och skryter om … 'She runs around and boasts about …' e.g. she keeps boasting about something.
No actual running has to be involved for these sentences to be used!
Since these two already exist, in order to create the continuous form you were imagining, we must add omkring. Then it works: Han springer omkring och tänker på … 'He is running around thinking about …'
Sure, that's what we usually say. Han står och tittar på dig has a stronger continuous meaning than the English continuous in is watching, but with the present, just tittar, there's no continuous meaning.
So when you translate the English continuous into Swedish, you have to either do without that meaning, or exaggerate it. There's no 1=1 match.
Depends on how you define 'idiom'. I'd say it's a grammatical construction. We wrote about them here: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/sv/Continuous-Forms
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In the UK there are very few who wouldn't understand "I am stood" in various contexts. E.g : Standing outside a GP surgery, a physically unwell elderly woman waits for her husband to park their car so he can attend to her usual need for assistance with walking in to the waiting room. He has taken longer than usual to park the car and she has grown tired and a little impatient. She is leaning on a metal handrail for support, a look of fatigue, pain and indignation is evident on her face, in her demeanour and through her body language. Upon seeing her husband she rather loudly and probably a little unnecessarily exclaims "I'm stood here waiting for you, and almost doubled over in pain. Where have you been?" This idiomatic use of "I'm stood" entails past and present. It would be understood by all native English language speakers and in use by many. Regional speech has been elevated by the BBC, and many presenters on TV now originate from areas where regional speech predominates. Regional speakers should NOT be looked upon as uneducated, and those attitudes are outdated. (Though these attitudes do sadly persist.)
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When one uses those verbs (sitter, ligger, etc) to express continous action, is it necessary to include them in the translation? For instance, "Hon ligger och tittar po dig", could be translated to simply "she is watching you"?