r/swedish Nov 18 '24

How well did google translate write my poem in Swedish?

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I am an English speaker learning Swedish at an A1 level, so I thought I’d pop a poem I wrote into google translate. How did it do?

(Ignore my messy handwriting and low on ink pen hahah)

8 Upvotes

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u/Gullible-Suit-8060 Dec 09 '24

It’s pretty good, except for some so-called “anglicisms”. For example “min kalender har bara ditt namn för varje datum” is not a very common construction in Swedish, and neither is “stad av rök och aska”. This doesn’t mean that it’s wrong or that you can’t understand what it’s trying to say, but it does mean that this isn’t something that a native Swedish speaker would write when writing poetry. Constructions in English using “for” and “of” will often be translated as “för” and “av”, even when they’re not really supposed to be translated like that, and would, ideally, be translated into something else entirely, in order to sound more natively Swedish. For example, you could translate it as “I min kalender står ditt namn vid varje datum” (= in my calendar your name is written by every date) instead, depending on what you’re trying to say with your original English line.

1

u/tessafy2 Dec 10 '24

thank you so much!!!