"När började smärtan?"

Translation: When did the pain start?

[KTamaslingo]

I would argue that a variation of "When did it start to hurt?" should be accepted, although I acknowledge that it is a fairly liberal translation for this.

[devalanteriel]

I imagine the course admins would like to not accept this since it would correspond better to another Swedish phrase (när började det göra ont?), and it has some pedagogical purpose to separate the two.

[KTamaslingo]

Yeah I got that phrase just after this one, I think. So, understandable.

[k3jph]

That's interesting, because there is an English verb "smart" that means to be in pain.

[Zmrzlina]

They're related. :)

[MatheusBernat]

Could I use here ''ont'' instead of ''smärta''? What are the differences btw them?

[Arnauti]

smärta is a noun, like 'pain'.
ont is normally only used as an adverb: det gör ont means 'it hurts'.
To have ont in this sentence, you could say När började det göra ont? 'When did it start to hurt?'

[Ruben27956]

So 'when did the pain began' is too loose a translation?

[ahferroin7]

No, 'began' is incorrect, though i can understand why you might try that ('började' is simple past tense in Swedish).

English does not use past tense verbs in interrogative clauses that start with 'when did', so you need the simple present tense 'begin' instead of the simple past tense 'began'. I think there's a special term for this type of past tense verb phrase ('did begin'), but I don't know what it is.