# Swedish: utlämna/utvisa



## Miss Bellasis

Hello,

I'm translating a text about Jewish refugees in Finland during the Second World War.  Throughout the text the author uses _utlämna _when talking of refugees being threatened with expulsion or actually being forced to leave, e.g: 

_Efter att Finska Notisbyrån i december 1942 publicerat en kommuniké om utlämningen som okritiskt upprepade statspolisens tolkning av händelserna återkom Arbetarbladet__till fallet. Tidningen ställde sig frågande till att lindrig brottslighet skulle få vara orsak till utlämning.

_I understood _utlämna _to mean 'extradite' but in the context 'deport' seems a more appropriate translation, especially as there is only one brief reference to pressure from a foreign government in the matter.   

So my question is: Can _utlämna _also be used to mean deport in Swedish? 

_U__tvisa_, which I thought meant 'deport', is used once to refer to the refugees: 
_Gällande de exakta händelserna under de dramatiska dagar då de utvisningshotade flyktingarnas öde avgjordes finns det olika delvis motstridiga versioner._

Any comments welcome - and thanks in advance!


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## etaro

I would say that your first assumption is correct.

"Utlämna" translates to "extradite" and "utvisa" as "deport". I believe the key thing here is wether a foreign state has demanded the *extradition* of their citizen or if the country wants to *deport *someone back to a nation that necessarily doesn't want them back.

So in your first sentence it implies that some nation has demanded finland to "utlämna" people to them, while in the other thats not the case. If the two phrases are connected it is a bit clumsy of the author, but I'd say that in every day speech, Swedes would not really separate the two words as they are have very similar meaning. The difference I think is mere a legal one...

EDIT: To actually answer your question: No, utlämna can not correctly be used as deport in Swedish, though it is unlikely anyone would correct you. I think the author should use the word utvisa rather than utlämna, but it's hard to tell from that short sentence.


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## utmarker

"Utlämna" may be used here for its polemic value as it in Swedish sounds slighty more sinister and hostile while "utvisa" is more neutral and implies a higher degree of guilt on behalf of the deportees.
I here make the assumption that the article is somewhat critical towards the deportation.

The word "utlämna" has its cousin "utelämna", often confusing nowadays even for many Swedes it seems, that means "leave out" which makes "utlämna" a bit heartless sounding and therefore readily used for polemic purposes.


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## AutumnOwl

Was the text written by a person who have Sweden Swedish or Finland Swedish as their native language or by a person who have Finnish as their native language and Swedish as their second language? I know that it's probably not possible to find out today, but I can imagine that depending on what the writer's native language was, the difference between using _utvisa_ and _utlämna _may not have been as clear for him/her as it is today in the Swedish language, especially if the text was translated from a Finnish original.


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## Miss Bellasis

Hello all, 
Thanks for your comments

etero: Thanks -  especially re:  "No, utlämna can not correctly be used as deport in  Swedish, though it is unlikely anyone would correct you" - it's good to  know about everyday understanding/speech.  That's why Word Reference  forums are such a good thing : )

utmarka: Thanks for this, and  the interesting comment re utlämna/utelämna. Actually, the tone of the  article is quite dramatic in general, so a polemic use of utlämna is a  possibility - I guess it also has a ring modernity to it, with  political events today.

AutumnOwl: The article was written recently by someone who (as far as I know) has Finland Swedish as their  native language - I found another article in English, though possibly  originally written in Finnish, where deport and extradite seemed to be  used interchangeably, so had wondered if there was something about a  weaker distinction.


In (British) English extradite must be related to two (or more) states, with one state making  making an official request to another for the person/people to be sent  back. Deport  is what a country can do to foreign nationals on its own soil if it  doesn't want them anymore.  So they can't be (or shouldn't be!) used interchangeably at all - even for polemic reasons.

Brilliant, thanks very much all.

I  think 'deport' would be better to use, as 'extradite'  is going to sound like a mistranslation.  Oh no, but if the author has  deliberately used 'extradite' for effect then....
3 days to the deadline, three days to decide!


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## Ben Jamin

I always thought that "utlämna" in Swedish means the same as "utlevere" in Norwegian, that is to hand over a person to a group or organization (authorities in a state first of all, but it might also be a criminal group). I also believed that ‘extradition’ is an “utlämning” that is done legally by a state’s authorities to another state’s authorities. Please, correct me if I am wrong.


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## AutumnOwl

Miss Bellasis said:


> AutumnOwl: The article was written recently by someone who (as far as I know) has Finland Swedish as their  native language - I found another article in English, though possibly  originally written in Finnish, where deport and extradite seemed to be  used interchangeably, so had wondered if there was something about a  weaker distinction.


I don't know how much influence there is between the meaning of words in Finland between Swedish and Finnish, it's possible that the meaning of the Finnish word for _extradite_ have influenced Finnish Swedish. I made a search in a online dictionary of the Finnish word *luovuttaa* (extradite), and found that it had 29 translations into English! http://www.sanakirja.org/search.php?q=luovuttaa&l=17&l2=3 and 18 translations into Swedish: http://www.sanakirja.org/search.php?q=luovuttaa&l=17&l2=15


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## Miss Bellasis

That is a lot!
I've also since found this: http://sv.bab.la/lexikon/svensk-engelsk/utlämna
which suggests utlämna has more meanings in Swedish than extradite does in English.

Thanks all, this has been interesting!


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## JohanIII

I agree with what is stated here, that _utlämna_ requires that the recieving entity (state itself or otherwise e.g. security service) has made a request first.
Such an action would not, if you believe in your fellow man, be taken for a request from a criminal organization.

But it also wouldn't (shouldn't) actually even be recognized for criminals; that is why I chose a legal state sub-entity as an example (as Ben Jamin says "authorities"), and so would never expect that the term would be connected to anything but legal requests. In those cases I think you would want to choose another word.

You also have the word "leverera" in Swedish, and it means deliver, plain an simple (well, not as in deliver us from evil, but). So a more neutral word as that one might possibly be used in Swedish for "handing over" a person - with no regard to circumstances.

For clarity's sake I also agree that if you deport someone, it is a unilateral action. *NB: deport* can also be within a state, like to the gulag. It is a more *physically* defined action - reallocation. Throw out.

Re "unlikely anyone would correct you" - I would instantly, but then again I am a member of this forum, so...

Lastly: context is almost never just a sentence.


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## Wilma_Sweden

I think most Swedes in fact know the difference between 'utvisa' and 'utlämna' and would react if used haphazardly/interchangeably. In legal terminology, which I think is the most common usage of 'utlämna', it is clear, as stated before, that utlämna=extradite and utvisa=deport.

Is it possible that someone actually requested the extradition of these jews?


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## AutumnOwl

Wilma_Sweden said:


> I think most Swedes in fact know the difference between 'utvisa' and 'utlämna' and would react if used haphazardly/interchangeably.


I agree that for most Sweden Swedes the diffrence is clear, but is it certain that it's the same in Finland Swedish?


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## Wilma_Sweden

I've finally had time to do some research about the event - interesting to say the least - and apparently, this is a bit murky, i.e. there is discussion whether this was a straightforward extradition or simply a deportation, but at the time, Finland had sided with Germany to fight Russia, and by deporting jews to German-controlled territory, the effect remained that the eight jews who were eventually deported swiftly ended up in Auschwitz, and only one survived. 150-odd jews were rescued from this deportation, including Dr Walter Cohen, whose family history is depicted below. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the scholarly article (third link), nor the full unabridged article by Svante Lundgren mentioned in Ny Tid. Still, as a translator, I would, in this case, be careful to follow the original author's word choice, i.e. utvisa=deport and utlämna=extradite.

Sources: 
http://www.nytid.fi/2003/11/atos-och-de-judiska-flyktingarna/
http://pomona62.com/Cohen.htm
http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/9/1/70.short


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