this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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In case people are wondering: it's indeed a german joke.
It's a pun. "meet" and "hit" are using the same word in german
So it's a misstranslated joke then. With that information it's kinda funny or at least it makes sense.
More like untranslatable, as the context just doesn’t work in English. You either have something that doesn’t make sense or - if you use the other meaning - a statement with no humor. The pun is completely dependent on the German phrasing.
That joke used to work in English.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/meet
It still can mean collision or fight, but the context needs to be very clear. Two armies meeting on the battlefield, for example. Or two hunters met in combat.
That's why translation can be so hard, especially for poems, songs, comedy etc. Double meanings, metaphors, rhymes etc are often lost when translated.
In some cases you can replace a pun with another pun that works in the target language.
In other cases, where you're translating a religious text, doing something for scholarly reasons, or you otherwise think your audience would really like to know what's going on in a text you have to add a translation note.
Come to think of it, that's a thing in Swedish as well - we could make the pun work there as well:
Två jägare träffades. Båda dog.
Båda dog! Båda dog! No Treåt
(I know å is pronounced like "eu" like in Blåhaj. Couldn't help myself tho)
For it to match Swedish phonetic rules, it would have to be:
Bäd dågg! Bäd dågg! Nåu trit!
Oh true my bad, thank you!
Well, doing it in properly phonetic Swedish would have ruined the joke a bit in English, so I don't think it's a problem.
A Båda dog once bit my sister... No realli!
Works in Dutch too.
Twee jagers treffen elkaar. Beiden zijn dood.