# Norwegian: to be tarred with the same brush



## torrobin

Hi, I wonder how to translate into Norwegian the expression '_to be tarred with the same brush_'. 

I found this explanation on The Free Dictionary:
'to believe wrongly that someone or something has the same bad qualities  as someone or something that is similar (usually passive) _I admit that some football supporters do cause trouble but it's not fair that we're all being tarred with the same brush_.'

At Phrase Finder I found this: 
'If you've looked this up, then you know that being tarred was at one  time, in the U.S., literally to be covered with tar as a form of  humilitation and punishment--either for doing wrong or for being  different (e.g., being racially black). Sometimes the tarring was  followed by being covered with feathers, as from a pillow or a recent  chicken-plucking, hence "tarred and feather." This might be followed by  being ridden out of town on a rail (e.g., fence rail). I cannot give you  the history of this practice; perhaps someone else knows.'


In the first example, with the football supporters, one could use the Norwegian phrase 'å skjære alle over en kam'. But it seems to me that 'to be tarred' includes a more 'active action'. 

thanks, torrobin


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## Grefsen

torrobin said:


> In the first example, with the football supporters, one could use the Norwegian phrase 'å skjære alle over en kam'. But it seems to me that 'to be tarred' includes a more 'active action'.
> 
> thanks, torrobin


I happened to look up the Norwegian word for brush yesterday and think you might want to use *pensel* instead of *kam* in the sentence you are attempted to write.  Two of the translations for *kam* that I just found are "comb" and "hair brush." Also when I checked the verb *å skjære *in several Norwegian to English dictionaries, two of the translations I found are "to cut" or "to shear."


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## henbjo

Idioms like these are notoriously hard to translate, because of their figurative nature. The most analogous idiom in Norwegian will be, as you said, *å skjære alle over én kam*. I got to display one of the few uses of the acute accent in Norwegian, too.


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## Grefsen

henbjo said:


> Idioms like these are notoriously hard to translate, because of their figurative nature. The most analogous idiom in Norwegian will be, as you said, *å skjære alle over én kam*. I got to display one of the few uses of the acute accent in Norwegian, too.


What would be the English translation for the verb *å skjære *in this example?


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## NorwegianNYC

The expression actually refers to not giving everybody the same hair cut, i.e. not treating everybody the same way. Norw "skjære" is akin to Eng _shear_


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## Grefsen

NorwegianNYC said:


> The expression actually refers to not giving everybody the same hair cut, i.e. not treating everybody the same way. Norw "skjære" is akin to Eng _shear_


So would the literal translation of this expression be "to shear everyone with one comb"?


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## torrobin

NorwegianNYC said:


> The expression actually refers to not giving everybody the same hair cut, i.e. not treating everybody the same way. Norw "skjære" is akin to Eng _shear_



Just to end the discussion about 'skjære alle over en kam'; it doesn't mean to not treat everybody the same way. It's the opposite; it means to treat and/or judge various people in the same, often derogatory, general way. It is used often to indicate prejudices, for example: A person meets a man from India who is very rude, and he/she then claims that 'all people from India are rude'. 

 As for the source of the idiom, here's from Riksmålsforbundet:

'(...) man uttaler det med trykk på EN, som da bør skrives med accent aigu: én.


Uttrykket  skriver seg fra den tid da man ikke klippet, men skar håret. Man løftet  håret med en kam (slik man gjør også i dag) og skar det som raget over  kammen. _Å skjære alle (eller alt) over én kam_ betydde  altså å skjære alles hår på samme måte. Man kan kanskje forestille seg  at "frisørene" hadde kammer av forskjellig bredde og brukte dem ifølge  "kundens" ønske om hvor mye som skulle skjæres.

Uttrykket  er oppført i ordbøkene. I "min" ordbok (Norsk Ordbok med 1000  illustrasjoner, Kunnskapsforlaget 2005) står det under KAM og med  henvisning fra SKJÆRE. Det pleier dessuten å stå i populærbøker om  språk. Siste sted jeg har sett det omtalt, er i Kjell Ivar Vannebo: "Et  columbi egg og andre uttrykk (Cappelen Damm 2009).'



'Å skjære alle over en kam' is an idiom and as such the word 'kam' can't be changed into 'pensel' or anything else. Nor can the idiom be directly translated into English.

Back to the discussion of this thread: 'To be tarred with the same brush'. I wonder if one might translate it into 'å bli behandlet på samme måte'. 

torrobin


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## henbjo

torrobin said:


> Back to the discussion of this thread: 'To be tarred with the same brush'. I wonder if one might translate it into 'å bli behandlet på samme måte'.



It seems like a perfectly valid translation in terms of being in keeping with the intended meaning, but you do lose the power of the idiom. I definitely think that if there's a possibility of using an analogous idiom as a translation, this is the best solution. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with using a widely known idiom as *å skjære alle over én kam* in a passive way: *Det er urettferdig når vi blir skåret over én kam alle sammen.*

As an aside, this part of your quote from Riksmålsforbundet caught my attention:


> (...) man uttaler det med trykk på EN, som da bør skrives med accent aigu: én.


This is surely incorrect. The reason for the accent is _not_ the emphasis you put on the word, but rather that it is the numeral one and you want to disambiguate it from the indefinite article *en*.


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## NorwegianNYC

torrobin said:


> I wonder if one might translate it into 'å bli behandlet på samme måte'.



Which is exactly what "skjære alle over én kam" means!


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## Grefsen

Tusen takk for det *torrobin!*


torrobin said:


> JAs for the source of the idiom, here's from Riksmålsforbundet:
> 
> '(...) man uttaler det med trykk på EN, som da bør skrives med accent aigu: én.
> 
> 
> Uttrykket  skriver seg fra den tid da man ikke klippet, men skar håret. Man løftet  håret med en kam (slik man gjør også i dag) og skar det som raget over  kammen. _Å skjære alle (eller alt) over én kam_ betydde  altså å skjære alles hår på samme måte. Man kan kanskje forestille seg  at "frisørene" hadde kammer av forskjellig bredde og brukte dem ifølge  "kundens" ønske om hvor mye som skulle skjæres.


This idiomatic expression makes a lot more sense to me now.  

I just thought I would add too that here in the U.S. one needs to be careful about using this expression "tarred with the same brush" because many feel that it has a racist history associated with the practice of whites unfairly punishing blacks by tarring and feathering them.


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## torrobin

Grefsen said:


> I just thought I would add too that here in the U.S. one needs to be careful about using this expression "tarred with the same brush" because many feel that it has a racist history associated with the practice of whites unfairly punishing blacks by tarring and feathering them.



I found a discussion on the English forum: Tar with the same brush - politically incorrect?

But I also found this site where the origin is said to not be racial at all: 

There’s nothing directly racist in its history, though there are  such huge sensitivities in the United States and elsewhere over any  expression that sounds as though it might be (as, for example, with  words and phrases such as _niggardly_, _call a spade a spade_,  and so on), that the reaction of your colleague is understandable.

It  also sounds as though it might be connected with the deeply pejorative  expression _a touch of the tar brush_ to describe somebody of mixed ancestry, though it’s actually a separate linguistic creation.  

As it happens, it doesn’t have anything directly to do with tarring and  feathering, either, which is an American vigilante punishment known from  the eighteenth century (it’s first recorded in Boston, as it happens)  and which my reading suggests wasn’t usually a punishment of blacks by  whites but of whites by other whites.

 The origin is the verb _to tar_, meaning to defile or dirty, known  from the early years of the seventeenth century. The idiom appears in  print first in 1818, in one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, _Rob Roy_: “They are a’ tarr’d wi’ the same stick — rank Jacobites and Papists.” Our modern form appears in William Cobbett’s _Rural Rides_ in 1823: “‘You are all tarred with the same brush’, said the sensible people of Maidstone.”

 The idea behind it is that two individuals who have been liberally  daubed or painted with the same tar brush look much the same and so  appear to have the same characteristics. The links of the colour black  with matters that were detestable, dishonourable or evil also added to  the negative sense.


But, as you said, I guess most people - at least in the US - consider it racist anyway. 

torrobin


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## Grefsen

torrobin said:


> Back to the discussion of this thread: 'To be tarred with the same brush'. I wonder if one might translate it into 'å bli behandlet på samme måte'.
> 
> torrobin


I was wondering if adding *dårlig* might help make the meaning closer to the expression "To be tarred with the same brush"?

*å bli behandlet dårlig på samme måte -* to be treated badly in the same way




torrobin said:


> I found a discussion on the English forum: Tar with the same brush - politically incorrect?
> 
> But I also found this site where the origin is said to not be racial at all:
> 
> There’s nothing directly racist in its history, though there are such huge sensitivities in the United States and elsewhere over any expression that sounds as though it might be (as, for example, with words and phrases such as _niggardly_, _call a spade a spade_, and so on), that the reaction of your colleague is understandable.


"Tusen takk" for posting these links *torrobin. *



torrobin said:


> But, as you said, I guess most people - at least in the US - consider it racist anyway.
> 
> torrobin


Unless you are prepared to spend some time explaining why the use of a word or an expression is not racist, it's probably best to simply avoid using them, especially at one's workplace.


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