We were discussing foreign languages and our command of them, last night (”our” referring to Swedes in general and the four of us in particular.) Ulrika made a very good point: as Swedes, we are used to people being self-deprecating about their abilities, but when it comes to English many people seem to believe they are much more proficient than they actually are. Which is absolutely true, I think; I won’t cite instances but the Internet is full of examples.

Me, I write a lot in English (as you probably know if you are reading this) and do it fairly well, but it’s definitely true that I don’t command the nuances of English in the same way I hopefully do with Swedish. For instance, I was contemplating the poem Förklädd Gud (God in Disguise) ; in the last part, we have “Bjuder ett mänskoöga till stilla kärleksfest”. Right - if I wanted to translate this, the words themselves are no problem, but how to transfer the nuance and register of “mänskoöga” here; does “human eye” carry the same kind of connotation? And “stilla kärleksfest”. . .
Fortunately I won’t have to do this; God in Disguise is already translated - in spite of doing some research on the topic I haven’t been able to find out who did this excellent translation.

[later, much later addition: the webpage has been updated with the names of the translators, Caroline and Arthur King.]