Anyone speak Swedish?

MacGyver1968

MacGyver1968

Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke
Valued Senior Member
I just finished watching the English dub of the Swedish film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". In one scene there is something written in Swedish that is not subtitled...I was hoping someone could translate it for me. I'll "spoil" it for those that haven't seen the movie. (warning...mildly graphic)

A girl takes revenge on her rapist by tying him up and tattooing something on his stomach. It's not very clear..hope you can read it.

tattoo.jpg
 
According to the wiki entry, what's written is:
I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist
Click to expand...

Just ignore the quote, it's not like it's written on the Wiki page or anything.
 
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MacGyver1968 said:
I just finished watching the English dub of the Swedish film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". In one scene there is something written in Swedish that is not subtitled...I was hoping someone could translate it for me.
Click to expand...
I can't make out the letters well enough to spell the words. I get sadistisk, which obviously means "sadistic," and och, which is "and."

There are free online dictionaries for most of the politically and commercially important European languages. If you can get a better fix on the individual letters by running the video and seeing them from multiple perspectives, then you should be able to spell the words. Then we'll have something to work with. Swedish is sometimes not too hard to puzzle out if you know a bit of the grammar and some German.
 
I can make out "Jag ar et" 'I am a' and I presume like Fraggle 'sadistic'.
the next line starts "svin" swine, I suspect. Then "och en" 'and a' . So:

I am a sadistic swine and a something. That something being the last line which looks like:

"vacotaktsman" or "vacotakts man". No idea but rapist is a likely guess.

My swedish isn't that great but the wiki entry is probably close.
 
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Aha! I tried Googling the Swedish words we've managed to puzzle out, and came up with this on a Swedish website:

Jag är ett sadistiskt svin och en vådtäksman.

Now all we need to do is find out what vådtäksman means. I tried Googling it and all I get are references to this film in Swedish. The online Swedish dictionary doesn't list it, nor any of the components like vådtäks or täksman.

However, the website has a couple of ads for people who want to find en partner. What an icebreaker!
  • Hi! I'm from the United States and I'm looking for a nice Swedish guy/gal who can tell me what a vådtäksman is. Is it something really cool?
 
He is a sadistic pig and likes "watersports" is my uneducated guess: Literally "wetnessman" is my hunch about the word in question. But I know little about kinky things Swedish (really).
 
It's actually, valdtaktsman...And, it means rapist..

It says... I am a sadistic swine, and a rapist..(nothing about pervert)

Mystery solved..
 
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Gremmie said:
It's actually, våldtäktsman... And, it means rapist. It says... I am a sadistic swine, and a rapist. (nothing about pervert) Mystery solved..
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Good work! Thanks! Now I can see the L and the T.

Yes, they did leave out "pervert." As I speculated, when they changed the mode of writing on his skin from a tattoo to a knife, they had to make the letters bigger, so there wasn't room for as many words.

Interesting that even on Swedish websites there are several references to the wrong spelling.
 
MacGyver1968 said:
I just finished watching the English dub of the Swedish film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". In one scene there is something written in Swedish that is not subtitled...I was hoping someone could translate it for me. I'll "spoil" it for those that haven't seen the movie. (warning...mildly graphic)

A girl takes revenge on her rapist by tying him up and tattooing something on his stomach. It's not very clear..hope you can read it.

tattoo.jpg
Click to expand...

I had the same problem so I looked it up in the book

don't know if its the same in the film but in the book it says:

I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST
 
Thank you all!..now that the mystery is solved....The movie itself is pretty good. Nice little murder mystery. I started watching the sequel last night, but it wasn't a dub, and just used subtitles...was making my headache worse...so I'll give a go another night.
 
MacGyver1968 said:
I started watching the sequel last night, but it wasn't a dub, and just used subtitles...was making my headache worse...so I'll give a go another night.
Click to expand...
I don't like dubbing. The sounds of the language are an important part of the culture. If you change the language you're removing the movie from the culture that created it. If you translate Italian or Japanese, which have a very high syllable count, into English or French, with our very low syllable count, the dialog loses energy and becomes downright torpid.

But I agree, subtitles only work in theaters, where they're big enough to read.
 
I prefer dubbing to subtitles, its easier to pay attention to the movie if you're not reading all the time - most of the Hong Kong movies we watch are dubbed in Hindi. And the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was dubbed extremely well
 
S.A.M. said:
I prefer dubbing to subtitles, its easier to pay attention to the movie if you're not reading all the time - most of the Hong Kong movies we watch are dubbed in Hindi. And the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was dubbed extremely well
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I've never seen a Chinese movie that was dubbed. That would have the opposite effect. English has a higher syllable count than Chinese, so it would make the dialog seem frenetic.

Chinese movies are always subtitled in Chinese, for the benefit of the people who don't speak that particular language. (It's a myth that the various speech variants of China are just dialects.) So it's a great way to improve my mastery of both written and spoken Chinese.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
I've never seen a Chinese movie that was dubbed. That would have the opposite effect. English has a higher syllable count than Chinese, so it would make the dialog seem frenetic.

Chinese movies are always subtitled in Chinese, for the benefit of the people who don't speak that particular language. (It's a myth that the various speech variants of China are just dialects.) So it's a great way to improve my mastery of both written and spoken Chinese.
Click to expand...

Only if you know at least enough Chinese to start with!

Most Jackie Chan movies - his Hong Kong ones - are available dubbed in English. And we have cable channels entirely devoted to English movies dubbed in Hindi for the benefit of the 98% of Indians who are not fluent in the language. But we've grown up with dubbed movies, in a country with so many languages, it would be hard not to
 
For me, I guess it really depends on the movie. In many cases, the voice actors used in a dub aren't as talented as the original actors...so the movie loses something. In a action flick, where a lot is going on on the screen, and dialog isn't as important, I would prefer a dub...so I can concentrate on the visual effects. In a drama, however, where dialog and emotion are the most important thing, I would prefer subtitles..so I hear the emotion of the actors.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was dubbed by the original actors (I think), and was well done...virtually seamless... so you still felt the emotion of the actors.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
Good work! Thanks! Now I can see the L and the T.

Yes, they did leave out "pervert." As I speculated, when they changed the mode of writing on his skin from a tattoo to a knife, they had to make the letters bigger, so there wasn't room for as many words.

Interesting that even on Swedish websites there are several references to the wrong spelling.
Click to expand...

I see that the a is actually a capital "oh-uh" as well now that I know that it's supposed to be. Hard to tell the carving from the blood smears. ;)
 
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