Doctor Recommended

I'm onto your tricks Trebek

My cultural story of the day begins in a small room in your average suburban house in North America. Danish Blogs - I don't speak a lick of Juttelandese, but that didn't stop me from perusing their pad. I then went to Blogbot which I didn't understand really well (I think it's just a compilation of Danish Blogs, not Dutch) and I bumped into Paltanoke.net who's motto is: 'About as funny as income tax' (which I'll blog about later). And from there I end up at the cornerstone of this story: Svenskt webbloggindex (sic -- check out the explanation by David Kimmins).

As another one of my goals is to be syndicated everywhere and anywhere, I searched for the "Submit blog" button. The layout is similar to other sites, so I clicked the 'Anmäl en webblogg!' I then took out my handy googled English/Swedish dictionary and went to work on the lingo I couldn't decipher.

The first of two tests

I think anyone that has submitted a blog to some sort of directory or index could fill out the first part of the form easily. What stumped me however was this phrase:

Du får gärna beskriva bloggen med några ord

Now if they said Du får gärna noggen bloggen med några ord, I would've easily understood it. So I typed into the dictionary, beskriva:

Swedish entry word:
beskriver [beskr'i:ver] beskrev beskrivit beskriv! beskriva verb
berätta om, redogöra för, framställa; skildra

English translation:
describe; depict, portray

Examples:
metoden beskrivs i en rapport---the method is described in a report
han kan bäst beskrivas som en välgödd turist---he could perhaps be best described as an overfed tourist

Well I'm hardly an overfed tourist and I wouldn't want to be framställa-ized as one, so I wrote what any Real Warm-Blooded Blogger would:

The Official, Unadulterated 100% All Natural Weblog of Tim Swanson. Except No Imitation. Clean, Pure & Fresh.

The next hurdle was the dredded: "Och så ett meddelande, kanske?" Again I was stumped and was forced to look up meddelande:

Swedish entry word:
meddelande [²m'e:de:lande] meddelandet meddelanden meddelandena noun
upplysning, rapport

English translation:
message

Examples:
vi fick meddelande om vad som hade hänt---we were informed about what had happened

So what was my reason for this intrusion? Simply put: A blog by an enthusiastic Texan trying to broaden out and be cosmopolitan. (I tricked them, don't tell on me, I'm not really cosmopolitan).

I then pressed the Anmäl button, which as any Ivory Tower linguist can tell you, is the universally accepted and used term for "Submit" (sorta like esperanto is for terra firma).

I was then prompted with:

Tack! Jag kollar upp och lägger till den här bloggen så snart som möjligt! - which translates roughly to "Thank you very much, come again."

And who said you can't have fun blogging?

Posted by Tim at April 11, 2003 05:07 PM | TrackBack