# Norwegian: Vi kommer ingen vei



## eva nicolae

The character and his wife are trying to sleep, but a neighbor keeps turning the music on very loud. This happens not for the first time. Here is the husband's reaction:

_"Klokken er ikke elleve ennå", sa jeg. "Og det er fredag kveld. Vi kommer ingen vei med det."_

The wife replies she doesn't care, she will call the police.

What does the underlined sentence mean?


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## Bokfinken

It means calling the police will lead nowhere (it won't help).


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## eva nicolae

Ah, good, thanks. I have 4 translations and they were all slightly different.


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## Bokfinken

It's an interesting expression indeed, which often indicates a feeling of being stuck in an uncomfortable situation - literally "getting nowhere".


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## eva nicolae

This was more or less the translation, but I couldn't comprehend what it referred to: we have no chance to stop her? this will go on for a long time? there's nothing we can do? we can't go on like this? Each translator understood it differently or made it sound ambiguous.

Thanks again.


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## Bokfinken

Ah, I see. No, in this context it clearly means it's useless to call the police (because it's not even 11pm on a Friday night).


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## Ben Jamin

It's not obvious that the husband meant anything about the police. He just said that they had a weak position against the neighbour.


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## eva nicolae

Thank you, Ben Jamin. I'd be curious to see how other native speakers feel about it.


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## Ben Jamin

eva nicolae said:


> Thank you, Ben Jamin. I'd be curious to see how other native speakers feel about it.


It has nothing to do with the linguistic interpretation. It is simply so that the text does not give us any clue about the police involvement before the wife speaks. We simply don't know if the husband or the wife mentioned the police in the first part of the conversation.


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## eva nicolae

No, they didn't mention police this time before the wife says she would call, but they had debated whether to call or not on other occasions - this is not the first time the neighbour wakes them up with the music. Does that change the situation?


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## raumar

On the one hand, I agree with Bokfinken that the husband probably meant that it was useless to call the police. But on the other hand, I agree with Ben: the husband didn't actually say that. On the basis of the context that Eva has given us now (that they had debated whether to call the police earlier) and the wife's answer, it is reasonable to believe that he was thinking about calling the police when he said: "_Vi kommer ingen vei med det." _But the sentence itself, seen in isolation, does not include anything about the police. The sentence just says that "it is useless", without making explicit what "it" is. "It" could be calling the police, but without further context, "it" could also mean ringing the neighbour's doorbell and asking them to be quiet.

This means that if Eva is looking for an accurate translation of the sentence, it should probably not include anything about the police. Let's look at the translation options you've got so far:



eva nicolae said:


> we have no chance to stop her? this will go on for a long time? there's nothing we can do? we can't go on like this? Each translator understood it differently or made it sound ambiguous.



In my opinion, "this will go on for a long time" and  "we can't go on like this" are clearly incorrect translations. The two other choices, "we have no chance to stop her" and "there's nothing we can do" both seem to convey the meaning of the Norwegian original. But
"we have no chance to stop her" is more concrete and specific than the original, so "there's nothing we can do" may be a better translation. Or maybe "It's no use trying".


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## eva nicolae

Thank you so much, raumar, for clarifications!


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