# Swedish: har ansvariga varit senfärdiga



## kfz2010

This sentence:

       Detta virus har *ansvariga *varit *senfärdiga *med att hejda.

from DN reads difficult for me. How shall we understand "ansvariga" and "senfärdiga" here?

Thanks.


----------



## MattiasNYC

(people) "responsible" (for doing something)
"slow" (to do something)

In that order.


----------



## kfz2010

Thanks. So is it a short version of:

  Detta virus har ansvariga *[som har]* varit senfärdiga med att hejda.


----------



## MattiasNYC

kfz2010 said:


> Thanks. So is it a short version of:
> 
> Detta virus har ansvariga *[som har]* varit senfärdiga med att hejda.



To me that doesn't look right. In English your sentence above would read as "This virus has responsible people"... but the virus doesn't have responsible people, what is being said is that there are people, and those people are responsible for something (stopping the virus). I think you can see what the problem is if you change a couple of words:

" *Detta företag har anställda* som har varit..."
"This business has employees that have been..."

If I were to rewrite the original sentence I would maybe write:

Original: "*Detta virus har ansvariga varit senfärdiga med* *att hejda.*"
New: "De* ansvariga har varit senfärdiga med att hejda detta virus.*"
EN: "Those responsible have been slow to stop this virus."


----------



## kfz2010

Thanks! It looks like the original sentence has shuffled around the components heavily, the subject, the object etc., making it difficult to understand I would say.


----------



## MattiasNYC

I agree. For a non-native speaker it's less easy to understand. I don't actually particularly care for it either to be honest.


----------



## AutumnOwl

The sentence could also be written as: Att hejda detta virus har ansvariga varit senfärdiga med (to stop this virus those responsible have been slow with.) Not very good English, and not much better in Swedish, but the formulation in Swedish is about what the author have wanted to put the most importance on in the sentence, the virus, those responsible, or the slow response.


----------



## Den falska sköldpaddan

kfz2010 said:


> Thanks! It looks like the original sentence has shuffled around the components heavily, the subject, the object etc., making it difficult to understand I would say.



To me the sentence quoted in post #1 reads tolerably well. As *AutumnOwl* said, this is a case of emphasis. In Swedish syntax it is not unusual that a part of sentence (and often the direct object) is emphasized by placing it first. As in


> Jag känner honom. = I know him.
> Honom känner jag. = I know _him_.


----------



## serbianfan

Den falska sköldpaddan said:


> To me the sentence quoted in post #1 reads tolerably well


I agree. Scandinavians are used to "shuffling around" words for emphasis, and I don't think they would find the sentence particularly difficult to understand.


----------

