Venskabsby/sister city/twin town

From Gyldendal's big Danish-English dictionary:

venskabsby sb adopted town, twin town
-er (også)paired towns, twinned towns, twin towns; være ~ med be twinned with.

Once again, this should be marked as UK English. Twin town just sounds plain silly in American English. There are twin cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul for example), but twin towns? The entry should have included the North American term: sister city.

Google hits:
twin town - 254,000
sister city - 835,000

It drives me crazy that they don't include the term that is actually way more common! I'm not saying "take the UK" terms out. I'm saying, mark them as being what they are: unintelligible to the majority of US English speakers. And include the US term. Please!

følgebrev/cover letter/covering letter

From Gyldendal's big Dansk-Engelsk dictionary:

følgebrev covering letter; (advisseddel) letter of advise, delivery letter.

I've never heard it called a "covering letter." I've only ever heard it called a "cover letter."
And, indeed, if we take a look at the number of Google hits each version receives:
covering letter = 1,120,000
cover letter = 7,190,000
You will see that the form I'm familiar with is about seven times as common. Why does Gyldendal not include it?

As it happens I don't really accept "letter of advise" or "delivery letter" as proper English either. "Letter of advise" should be spelled "advice" (as it is under the Gyldendal's entry for "advisbrev." I'm not sure how either of these should be translated into English. Honestly, I bought the dictionary so I wouldn't have to figure things like this out...

ovenlys/roof light/skylight

Finally, a word from a Danish dictionary. And not just any Danish dictionary, but Gyldendal's enormous Dansk-Engelsk Ordbog, the Vinterberg & Bodelsen behemoth.

ovenlys et overhead light; (i tag) roof light.

I've never heard of a "roof light." So I did an image search on Google and guess what? Apparently "ovenlys" should be translated as "skylight" in U.S. English. And sure enough, if you do a Google image search for "roof light" you get a bunch of hits for British pages showing skylights and also a bunch of pages for the lights that go on top of police and taxi cab roofs.

Google hits:
roof light 155,000
skylight 6,040,000

So, my point once again, is that the UK term should be marked as such since it is essentially unintelligible in US English and the dictionary should provide the (overwhelmingly more widespread) US term: skylight.

apoteker/dispensing chemist/pharmacist

drogerihandler subst; slightly old-fashioned (=apoteker) dispensing chemist; US: druggist.

OK, again the American in me has to say, what the heck? This is from Kirkeby's Stor Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok. What gets me is that they give a specific American translation, but they give "druggist." I found the term "druggist" in Merriam Webster, but I have to say this is pretty much the only place I've ever heard it. The everyday American term is "pharmacist." Why doesn't Kirkeby include the translation "pharmacist"? And why does Kirkeby mark "druggist" as the US term?

A quick Google search really says it all:
dispensing chemist: 46,300 hits
druggist: 784,000 hits
pharmacist: 18,400,000 hits

I just don't understand why my Norwegian to English dictionaries so frequently don't include the most normal, most common translation for these terms. Seriously. Eighteen million hits is a lot of hits.

Scotch collops/scotch a rumor

When I looked up “avlive” today in my Kunnskapsforlaget’s Stor Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok, I found this definition:

avlive verb 1. kill, put to death, put to sleep (especially of pets)
2. (by extension) put an end to, scotch (about rumors and the like)
• han prøvde å avlive ryktene som hadde oppstått he tried to scotch the rumours that had started

I’ve never heard the expression “scotch” used as a verb. So, as is so frequently the case when I look things up in my Norwegian to English dictionary, I had to look up the English term. I can’t help but feel that that would not be necessary with a good Norwegian to American English dictionary. Sigh.

Merriam-Webster assures me that it’s been used this way since the 15th century. So, as usual, my ignorance is part of the problem. But I do want to point out that I’m a very bookish person. I have a PhD in literature. I read a lot. So if I find something to be an obscure term, it’s probably not a term that is necessary in the Norwegian to English dictionary. If I, a native speaker of English, don’t have the term in my active vocabulary, I don’t recommend that Norwegians with English rusty enough that they need to use this dictionary go flinging the term around. Primarily because there’s a significant risk that the English speakers they’re trying to communicate with won’t understand it.

I did a quick search on Google to see how common the expressions are. Here are the number of hits I got:
“scotch the rumours” 604
“scotch the rumors” 190
“end the rumours” 1,670
“end the rumors” 21,700
This clearly shows that the use of “scotch” is more common with the UK spelling of “rumour” and thus probably chiefly British. If 21,000 people say “end the rumors,” I’m going to have to go with that.

As a fluke, however, I discovered something amazing while researching this in the OED. Although I am an American, my ethnicity is mostly UK in origin. And I grew up eating a meal we called “Scotch scallop” or “Scotch shlop” which was a bed of mashed potatoes, with a sautéed ground beef and onion mixture and a can of Leseur peas. I loved it. But I never had any idea what the scallops referred to or why no one else had heard of this meal.

Well, in researching “scotch” in the OED, I found the following meaning for “scotch”:

locally. Meat cut into small pieces. Scotch collops: ‘a savoury dish made of slic'd veal, bacon, forc'd meat and several other ingredients’ (Bailey 1730-6); now, a steak with onions. minced collops (Sc.): minced meat, mince.

svindler/fraudster (what about cheat? or con artist?)

svindler noun swindler, fraud, fraudster (especially in business contexts), con artist (colloquial)

My argument with this term is “fraudster,” which should be marked as UK English and not “especially in business contexts”!) Merriam Webster explains that fraudster dates all the way back to 1960 and is chiefly British. So then I looked it up in the OED, which defines fraudster as “One who commits fraud, esp. in a business transaction,” dating it as far back as 1975! So, I suppose once again Kunnskapsforlaget’s Stor Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok is correct for British English. If I translated “svindler” as “fraudster” in the U.S., however, my clients would balk. The entry should specify that "fraudster" is UK English and should also include "cheat."

ta fart/take a run-up/get a running start

Another expression I encountered in Kunnskapsforlaget's Stor Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok was:

ta fart take a run-up

This should be marked as UK English as it is completely unintelligible in U.S. English. Based on the OED my best guess is that it is a cricket term, meaning to get a running start. Which means that Kunnskapsforlaget's entry is incomplete. They should mark "take a run-up" as UK English and they should provide a viable US English translation as well.

gladgutt/sandboy

While translating a while back, I encountered the word “gladgutt.” “glad” means “happy” and “gutt” means “boy,” so I figured I had a pretty good sense for what this word meant until I looked it up in Kunnskapsforlaget’s Norsk-Engelsk Stor Ordbok the other day and found:

gladgutt noun Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, sandboy
• han er en skikkelig gladgutt he’s as happy/jolly as a sandboy

Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky made perfect sense to me, but I was stumped by “sandboy.” What the heck’s a sandboy? So, I looked “sandboy” up in the OED and found “sand-boy: 1. a boy who hawks sand for sale. In proverbial phr. as happy (or jolly, etc.) as a sandboy.”

And even now, having researched it, I’m still a little confused as to whether these boys are drunk and/or homeless. This is just not in my active or passive vocabulary. And I would argue that there are literally millions of native English speakers who probably have no idea what a sandboy is, thus making this a bad translation. Or maybe it’s a good translation, but just British English? In which case Kunnskapsforlaget should mark it as such.

The Dictionaries

In this blog I will be giving examples of some of the crazy entries I've found in the Norwegian to English, Danish to English, and Swedish to English dictionaries I use in the course of my work as a professional translator. To my mind, as an American, they're all errors. Perhaps some of them are alright in British English. Or perhaps some of them were alright 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. But I consider them all errors now. 

The dictionaries I'll be referring to (and what they themselves claim about how they deal with US/UK English) are:

Gyldendals Dansk-Engelsk Ordbog. 4th Ed. 1998

Does not mention British verses American English differences in the forward.
The forward from the first edition, which came out in 1954 and which is cited at the start of the dictionary, does mention:
“Ved Valget af Oversættelser af Ord fra Dagligsproget har det ofte været nyttigt at kunne raadføre sig med indfødte Englændere.”
[“In choosing translations of words from colloquial language it has often proven useful to be able to consult with native-born English people.”]

Kirkebys Stor Engelsk Ordbok: Norsk-Engelsk. 2nd Ed. 2003.

Concerning British verses American English the forward states:
“Amerikansk engelsk er registrert i en viss utstrekning, især I de tilfeller der misforståelser kan tenkes å oppstå (see opplaget bukseseler).”
Translation provided:
“American English has been recorded to some extent, notably in cases where there may be ambiguity (see bukseseler).”
Bukseseler subst; pl: braces; U.S.: suspenders; et par ~ a pair of braces (U.S.: suspenders); se hofteholder; sokkeholder; strømpestropp).

Kunnskapsforlagets Norsk-Engelsk Stor Ordbok. 2002.

Concerning British verses American English the forward states:
“Den engelske rettskrivningen følger The New Oxford Dictionary of English, med britisk-engelsk som standard, og med amerikanske former som likeverdige sideformer. Dette innebærer at amerikansk-engelske oversettelser er oppgitt der de avviker fra de britisk-engelske.”
[The English spelling follows The New Oxford Dictionary of English, with British English as standard, and with American forms as equally valid variants. This means that American English translations are cited where they differ from the British English [translations].]

Norstedts Comprehensive Swedish-English Dictionary. 3rd Ed. 2000.

Concerning British verses American English the forward states:
“Wherever American English differs from British English the American variant is given. For the choice of headwords and examples a great number of Swedish, English and American dictionaries have been used (see the Bibliography on page XXII), as well as authentic examples from newspapers, books and different text databases.” -page V