# Swedish: tänkte, tyckte och rävgift här ?



## Moorland

Which of these words would be correct or are there other better meanings ?

Thanks.... 
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Han tänkte en stund på varför han tyckte så mycket om hennes personlighet, trots att hon var som rävgift ibland.

He wondered/thought for a moment as to why he thought/wondered about her personality, as she was so difficult (evasive?) sometimes.


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## MattiasNYC

"(att) tycka om" is "(to) like", a set phrase.... so "*tyckte* *så mycket* *om*".

"Rävgift"…. "Räv" = fox... "gift" = poison....

Also, "trots att" = despite.


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## Moorland

So....

"He pondered for a moment as to why he liked her personality so much, despite her being like a poisoned fox sometimes....?"


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## Segorian

Moorland said:


> "He pondered for a moment as to why he liked her personality so much, despite her being like a poisoned fox sometimes....?"


Yes, except “fox poison” (not “poisoned fox”). _Rävgift_ can refer metaphorically to something that has a repulsive taste (like ‘rat poison’ in other words) or seems bad for your health, but it is not frequently used to describe persons.


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## raumar

In addition: isn't "en stund" longer than "a moment"? Maybe "a while" is better?


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## MattiasNYC

Like Segorian said it's not the fox that is poisoned, its her personality that is unpleasant. I think in at least American English a better translation would be "rat poison" instead. As far as my memory serves me I've heard that much more frequently than any other similar term used to illustrate how something is awful... i.e. "The food? It was like eating rat poison!"… 

Come to think of it, I don't particularly care for the use of the term here, in Swedish or English, which I guess is also reflecting on what Segorian said.

As for "en stund" I have to say that I'm not so sure I agree with Raumar. Google translates "en stund" to "a moment" actually, and I sort of think it's appropriate here. Of course we only have this one sentence as a reference/context, but it looks to me like the author is describing someone who is thinking about something for a moment rather than a longer period of time (longer than a moment).

Google again gives a different translation for "a while"; "ett tag", and I tend to agree with that.


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## Moorland

As you say it is a bit difficult to follow this presumably flowery connection to a person even in English, however would metaphorically "really difficult to get along with sometimes" do ? By contrast is it just as difficult for Swedes/Norwegians etc. to follow English metaphors as well ?

In fact metaphors could be a whole new topic in itself as I haven't seen it on here before....


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## MattiasNYC

I once had a couple of Verizon (telecommunications) sales guys come into the studio I work trying to sell broadband internet. I asked one of the guys a "What if xxxx" question, and the other who had stayed silent for a couple of minutes went "You mean, metaphorically!?" I said, "uhm…. yeah...." ("hypothetically" is what he meant, but "A" for effort).

To me the animal in question is pretty much irrelevant. Suppose I said "I like her personality... well, almost all the time I guess; sometimes she's like poison!" I get the feeling that how you would understand that would depend on how I said it, on context etc. Perhaps I'm talking about a woman who indeed has a wonderful personality until a certain point is reached, maybe because of disagreements within her larger family, and her mindset and demeanor and actions all change when interacting with some relatives... Perhaps she interjects snide remarks in conversations, guide them to verbal conflict etc... I think "poisonous" would be somewhat apt there. Or maybe it's a trait that comes out in work relationships instead.

Of course that doesn't necessarily exclude her being difficult to get along with, but I would argue it could be easy to get along with someone like that as long as the venom was aimed elsewhere, as well as argue that a person you thought was difficult to get along with could be so simply for other reasons, for example because of great insecurity or whatever....

Not sure if that made sense or made it worse...???


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## Moorland

A lot of sense thanks....

It's an interesting Swedish novel the first fiction one I've read and the level of Swedish I've managed to reach so far consequently the first metaphor I've come across so all very useful. It's about a young Swedish woman who lost her would be fiancee in a road accident whilst on holiday and the mental traumas she's still enduring in hospital back in Sweden for the past few months, the guy in question being her psychologist who is falling for her and the inevitable moral restrictions it's imposing on him.

So I'll have to watch out for metaphors in future....


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## MattiasNYC

Ah, makes sense...

… although I still feel a better metaphor could have been chosen. But what do I know, it's not like I write books for a living...


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## Moorland

Lol. In passing it's very difficult to buy ordinary Swedish fiction novels or books in the UK, I luckily got this expensive one on Amazon UK as all the Swedish booksellers I've contacted on line don't want to know for some reason yet most of them are only about 20/30 Kr each.

Any other possible sources I could try....?


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## Abbe

If you don't mind reading on a tablet you can find a lot of books in Swedish for free.

If you want to order books from Sweden I would suggest bokus.com or adlibris.com


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## Moorland

Thanks a lot....


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## Abbe

You're welcome. Do you think that "toxic" would be a good translation for "rävgift" in this context?


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## Moorland

Getting closer but I don't think it's quite wide ranging enough for a metaphor, perhaps more along the lines of....

"He paused for a moment puzzling about her personality as sometimes she would unexpectedly react with snake like venom towards him."


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## MattiasNYC

I think we're maybe changing the meaning of the word "like" now, and it won't work the same way when translated.

"trots att hon var som" is pretty much "despite her being like" which is then followed by "rävgift". The word "like" indicates that it's a metaphor.

Abbe; "Toxic" won't work without conjugating it because "her being like toxic" ends up sounding like the very casual, non-literal use of the word "like". You know, _like_, it's not functioning the same way (like in this sentence). So it would have to be something like "her being like a toxin/toxins". I think that's less common to use as a metaphor in cases like this. I agree "venom" is more common, and same with "poison".

Moorland; I take it you're writing a new sentence now (?) since it's now different from the Swedish one in the first post (including the first part). Either way, it looks to me like the phrase "react with snake like venom" would read more close to "snake-like", and thus put more emphasis on what type of venom her reaction was like rather than it just being venomous.



Abbe said:


> You're welcome. Do you think that "toxic" would be a good translation for "rävgift" in this context?






Moorland said:


> Getting closer but I don't think it's quite wide ranging enough for a metaphor, perhaps more along the lines of....
> 
> "He paused for a moment puzzling about her personality as sometimes she would unexpectedly react with snake like venom towards him."



​


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## winenous

MattiasNYC said:


> "trots att hon var som" is pretty much "despite her being like" which is then followed by "rävgift". The word "like" indicates that it's a metaphor.


In English, the word "like" indicates that the comparison is a SIMILE. If the word "like" was NOT there it would be a metaphor. (Or has English changed since I went to school?)

Simile: "She was like poison"
Metaphor "She was poison"

OK, I realise you where using both Swedish and English in what I quoted, Swedish might not make the distinction, and you were in the middle of making other points, so I apologise for focussing in on you @MattiasNYC. But the error has been made a few times so far in this thread, and I'm afraid I finally cracked.


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## Moorland

I think it's all getting a bit complicated now as I feel that metaphors by choice of any author can obviously be either very liberal, the complete opposite or all shades in between depending on what one wants to convey to the reader, so naturally every author will have their own differing slants on the use of their metaphors.

So for me in this particular example I think the looser the interpretation of the metaphor is, the more it leaves it all to the reader's imagination as what I wanted to convey was the obvious mental torture that she must be going through; swinging wildly between moments of human lucidity and inhuman irrationality and why I added a possible mental image of the glittering eyes of a venomous snake (cobra from memory ?) which freezes its intended victim into paralysis. In other words careful choosing of any metaphor can sometimes make or break the intended result and this I feel is what I more or less finally understood from the final choice of “fox poison”….?

I do hasten to add that I’ve never been any good or liked grammar at all so thanks for the update Winenous !


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## MattiasNYC

winenous,

You're right of course, it's a simile. I'm guilty of not paying enough attention to the difference in general. In the Swedish version "var som" really does translate to "was like", indicating as you said a simile rather than a metaphor.


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## MattiasNYC

Moorland said:


> for me in this particular example I think the looser the interpretation of the metaphor is, the more it leaves it all to the reader's imagination as what I wanted to convey was the obvious mental torture that she must be going through; swinging wildly between moments of human lucidity and inhuman irrationality and why I added a possible mental image of the glittering eyes of a venomous snake (cobra from memory ?) which freezes its intended victim into paralysis. In other words careful choosing of any metaphor can sometimes make or break the intended result and this I feel is what I more or less finally understood from the final choice of “fox poison”….?



See to me it's hard to get the impression that it's more about her than him. The sentence to me implies his struggle with reconciling his like of her in general with on the other hand the sometimes 'bad nature' she displays. So it reads as the observer contemplating that discrepancy... self-reflection essentially. With that view it's to me sufficient to simply point out that sometimes she's nice and sometimes she's really mean - no need to consider a deeper mental torture since the focus is on the self-reflection.

But it's hard to tell without the rest of the text/context.


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## Moorland

I was about to add that as although it's still only at the very beginning you'll see that up till then the main emphasis has been on her. Do you want the title of the book....?


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## MattiasNYC

Ah, I see. 

Yeah, what book is it?


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## Moorland

"När Sista Löven Faller" by Ingela Haraldsdotter. ISBN 9789 1639 9776 19


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