Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Vicka på foten/wag one's foot/swing one's foot

This one is from Norstedt's Big Swedish-English Dictionary.
vicka vicka på foten wag one's foot
This is being used of someone who is nervous. She is sitting in a chair, fidgeting and doing this with her foot. And I say, huh? As a native speaker of English, I would never say she was "wagging" her foot. But the English speaking world is vast, so I turn to Google. Perhaps other people do, just not in any of the areas I've ever lived.

Google hits:
wag one's foot - 0
wags her foot - 2
wags his foot - 5
wagging her foot - 10
wagging his foot - 10

I hardly think this is a good translation if it gets so few hits on the Internet. And honestly, a couple of those hits seem to come from foot fetish web sites and another is quoting a badly translated Chinese proverb. When I get in the middle of one of these muddles it's always hard to stop and think of what I would actually say. So, I'll try a few options that come to mind:

Google hits:
shakes her foot - 1280
shaking her foot - 3150
tap her foot - 773
+"tapping her foot" +nervous - 980
+"swinging her foot" +nervous - 626

I'm going to go with "swinging her foot" because "vicka" means "wobble, rock or sway." But, yet again, I would like to complain that I don't think "wag one's foot" is a viable translation option.

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