Saturday, February 13, 2010

Translating the Olympic Games



Literal translations are always a bit scary and they tend to be less than accurate, but they're still fun to do if for no other reason than a good giggle. I've been surfing the Olympic television listings for Denmark attempting to figure out which events I will be able to see - everything is generally broadcast live and with Vancouver 9 hours behind us, that makes viewing some events a bit tricky.

For example, the opening ceremonies were broadcast here - they started at 3 AM this morning.

Today begins the first day of competition in the Vancouver games. I love the Olympics. I miss the US coverage, as I've previously explained, but hopefully, as most of the exciting live events will happen here in the middle of the night, they'll do some recapping during normal waking hours.

If you're checking TV listings in DK, today's scheduled event is/was styrtløb. For those of you who don't possess a danish to english dictionary in your head, the literal translation of that is...

Crash Run

Yep, that's what the 'downhill' is called in Danish. That sounds a wee bit more frightening than the word downhill!

As of now, I hear the event has been postponed due to rain... which is a bit odd, considering every other place on the planet seems to have freakish snow at the moment.

I'll just go back to checking the listings and see what other strange names I can find for the events!

5 comments:

  1. heh...C is always cracking up over the simple, easy to understand Danish words:

    Gulerod
    Hvidløg
    Blæksprutte
    ...
    and his favourite: flyvemaskine

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  2. Crash run? Help... Hope the OS brings you new funny expressions to share with us.

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  3. DR1 HD showed the opening ceremonies at 3pm -6pm on Saturday. Except for a few times the danish commentators piped in to add something it was carried in French/English. Euro Sport seems to have some good coverage, they repeat the live early morning events the next day! :)

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  4. There's also live coverage, free but without commentary at,
    http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/olympics/

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  5. I just noticed that you have become a follower of my blog! So I had to come check you out and I do think I will become a regular visitor! ;)

    Learning all the Norwegian names for the Olympics events has been exhausting. I think it is hard enough to keep them all straight in English haha!

    I also think you will love some of my "foot in mouth" posts hehe. I started them pretty recently but they are good for a laugh for sure!

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