"Man får inte ta på gravida kvinnors magar utan att fråga först."
Translation:One is not allowed to touch pregnant women's bellies without asking first.
21 Comments
Does ta på mean touch then? Google is telling tm to touch = att röra Does Man får inte (att) röra gravida kvinnors magar utan att fråga först work
828
You can't have att with får inte, it's too modal.
röra isn't wrong but it gets a wider meaning which might sound a bit odd here, I'd prefer röra vid.
ta på definitely means 'touch'
- 1290
Shouldn't "One doesn't get to touch pregnant women's stomachs without asking first" be an acceptable answer?
Would "...utan att be först" also work? My understanding is that att fråga means to ask, whereas att be is more specifically to request. Is that correct?
Though, now that I think about it, even though it is a request, it would be pretty strange to say "...without requesting first" in English.
That is basically the reason it doesn't work in Swedish, either. It does sound less weird than "requesting" would, but it's still not completely natural even though it's not unidiomatic.
You could say utan att be om lov först, though. The phrase be om lov is a fixed way of asking for permission.
Some people don't know this. Quite a few strangers crossed this line with me - not a huge deal, but awkward, lol.
'Belly' seems a little undignified for a pregnant lady. Might 'tummy' be more appropriate? This seems to be a term that is used commonly in preference to 'belly'.
We do accept "stomach" as well. I'm not sure about "tummy" - it's correct but to me it sounds like something you'd say about a child, certainly not an adult woman. I take it this differs regionally, then?
Thanks for that. I hear from the nurses in the family that 'belly' is more widely used than I had believed. I think my query on that topic was not justified. On the subject of the best translation, I believe that the singular offers the best option: 'You should never touch a pregnant woman on her belly without asking her first.'
That definitely does sound like a more idiomatic translation outside of a language course.
No, English uses the plural s' only when the singular and plural forms are identical (minus the plural -s, of course). So even though it's (sg.) the book's / (pl.) the books', it's also (sg.) the woman's / (pl.) the women's.
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This is correct: "one doesn't get to touch a pregnant woman's stomach without asking first"
- 828
Correct as in 'a correct English sentence', yes. Correct as in 'an accepted answer here', no, because you changed the number of kvinnor: Your sentence would be Man får inte röra vid en gravid kvinnas mage utan att fråga först in Swedish.
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I think the English translation here should be "womens' " as we are talking about plural pregnant women?
- 828
Scroll up to devalanteriel:s comment on this page. (the plural of woman is women so the 's goes after that).
I think the idea is to avoid s's. We don't pronounce or write 2 separate s sounds for a possessive.
This applies to plural or singular words that end in the letter s.
Examples:
(singular possessive) Man's Woman's Child's Marius' Jesus' Person's Prince's Princess'
(plural) Men's Women's Children's People's Princesses' Princes'
