"Båten åker på Östersjön."

Translation: The boat goes on the Baltic Sea.

[Aileme]

Does the English translation really work?
Does the sentence mean that the boat is on the Baltic Sea, or rather that it is heading for the Baltic Sea?

[Zmrzlina]

It means the boat is somewhere on the waves in the Baltic Sea, not heading there. The English looks awkward to me too though.

[Arnauti]

I agree, I don't like the English version either, what should we change it to? Suggested versions are travels and sails, but both these will be a bit tricky to translate back into Swedish.

[Glennebanan]

This isn't a nautical term or anything, but here in Michigan where we have a lot of lakes and boats, most people would say just 'goes on' or 'goes out on,' if this is what the boat normally does. (So I think the translation is perfectly fine. On a river, you'd say 'goes down,' 'goes up,' 'goes up and down' or possibly 'goes on' the river.)

e.g. 'The freighter goes on Lake Superior, through the locks and then on Lake Huron.'
'They go out on their boat on Lake St. Clair on the weekends in the summer.'
'You can see that yacht going out of the channel onto the lake now.'

[jwbards]

I'm not sure where you ended up with this discussion; the English is odd but understandable. My English sentence would be simply "The boat is on the Baltic Sea." I didn't try it, though - I didn't want to get marked wrong. :-)

[zaragorti]

How about 'is in the Baltic Sea' or 'is going through the Baltic Sea'? I agree that 'on' does not sound right here.

[Aileme]

I couldn't find anything better than travels (apparently sails would work for many vessels without sails, but not for a little motor boat). I also like is on the Baltic See then both är and åker could be accepted, like in those sentences with towns and countries being somewhere, where both är and ligger are accepted.

[creativemetaphor]

Could always just change it to 'to' as in heading that direction. Or remove 'goes' and just say the boat is on the Baltic Sea.

[person222222]

To me, the best sounding sentence would probably be "The boat is in the Baltic Sea."

[IanCaliban]

To me, that sounds as if it has sunk.

[PercyBeal]

Absolutely agree

[BalvinderC1]

As a native English English speaker (and having read much of this discussion 10th Jul 18), I'd offer the following.
1. Given that the Swedish uses a verb of motion, I would translate using the verb 'to sail' if the boat/ship had sails or was of significant size and powered by a motor/engine.
2. The other alternative suggestions in this discussion use verbs of location or existence, which are fine, if that's what you want to convey.
3. The verbs to go or to travel would work in particular situations but each sounds clumsy or infantile if used as the norm.

[Zmrzlina]

I'm afraid I'm not nautically knowledgeable enough to suggest what'd be the proper wording. :s

[Sninguistics]

"The boat goes over the Baltic sea" is what comes naturally to me.

[BryanAJParry]

Ditto. "The boat goes on the Baltic Sea.", whilst technically grammatical, sounds very odd.

[luchuc]

Doesn't sound odd to me, but I live in Chicago and we frequently say 'on the lake' or 'out on the lake' when referring to a boat out on Lake Michigan. If we say 'in', we are implying that it is submerged.

[PLLumsdaine]

Please could “the Baltic” be added generally as a translation for “Östersjön”, not just “the Baltic Sea”? A few exercises accept it as an alternative, but it seems by default Duo doesn’t have it as a translation of the name. In English it is very common to just call it “the Baltic”; indeed, a quick google ngrams search suggests that until recently it was significantly more common than “the Baltic Sea”.

(I’ve reported this separately on several exercises, but just commenting here to explain the reason a bit more.)

[IanCaliban]

The typical way to render this in British English is The boat sails the Baltic Sea (and, incidentally, whether the boat has an actual sail is irrelevant), but I can see how that's problematic for translating in the opposite direction, replacing the more general verb and removing the preposition.

The preposition can be left intact without sounding too odd, but sails sounds a lot more natural than goes. Given the problem of mutual translation, however, perhaps the odd-sounding translation is best left alone.

[NordicWay]

No går here ? Because we learned from a previous exercise with planes that we can use går for traveling , i think..

[devalanteriel]

That's fine - added it now.

[Margaret758900]

"The boat plies the Baltic" would be correct (it suggests that it does it on a regular basis) however it is perhaps a bit old fashioned...

[devalanteriel]

The Swedish åker can't really feasibly be used for the "regular travel" sense that "ply" has, though. I would use trafikerar or går for that.

[niz.khan]

I did not learn Östersjön when doing the lessons, but it appears in the strengthen exercise. I wonder if I have missed many other words when doing lessons.