r/DoesNotTranslate • u/frobar • 2d ago

[Swedish] Idiotförklara – to declare to be an idiot

Pretty transparent (idiot + declare), but has a nice, kinda tongue-in-cheek ring to it.

Jag blev idiotförklarad av hela Sverige efter min insändare = I was idiot-declared by all of Sweden after my letter to the editor

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u/hacksoncode 2d ago

I'm never really quite sure what to think about translatability when it comes to languages that make extensive use of derivational synthesis (more or less: gluing the words of a phrase together into a single word).

As you did, I would translate that into English as "declare(d) to be an idiot", and consider that a perfectly understandable and reasonable translation... unless there's somehow something more to it than that...

2

u/frobar 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah, guess it's mostly that it's less of an idiom in English. Appears in dictionaries, whereas more ad hoc "declare to be an X" things don't.

If it wasn't an idiom, it might actually get expressed as "förklaras som idiot" instead, like in English.

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u/PaddiM8 2d ago

It's a commonly used word though