De minnet meg om Kristoffer Robin og Ole Brumm på spasertur i Hundremeterskogen.You could probably guess most of this, but it means "They reminded me of Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh on a walk in the Hundred Acre Wood." I have two things to say about this: first, "Ole Brumm" is an even cuter name than "Winnie-the-Pooh." Second, in Norwegian, the hundred acre wood is apparently a hundred *meter* wood. Now, I think a hundred acres is already kind of small to support a pair of kangaroos, a bear, a piglet, a depressed donkey, and whatever the heck else lives there. But a hundred meters? I think things might start getting a little crowded.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
ole brumm
Here's a sentence I read the other day in my Norwegian mystery novel:
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3 comments:
Does "Ole Brumm" mean anything specific? Or is it just a name? I like that name. The next snuffles I get, I'm naming it Ole Brumm!
100 acres actually seems pretty big to me. 100 meters, though, must be something like 1/1000th the area, which is quite a loss in translation. It sounds better than 100-hectometer-wood, though, which would probably be more true to the original intention...
Well, "Ole" is definitely a name. I always figured "Brumm" meant something like, yknow "brmmmm." Some kind of bear sound.
Ok, the dictionary tells me it means "hum" or "growl." Doesn't Pooh have a thing about humming?
Yeah, 100-hectare wood isn't very romantic-sounding, either. Really, it's just hard to make the metric system sound literary.
Yes, that's why we prefer the imperial system here in the States...because of our strong literary sensibilities...
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