Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Stockholm Metro Literally

detail from If Germany had won the war mapSome of you might be familiar with the "If Germany had won the war" Tube map, which takes the London Underground Map and translates station names to German. Mile End becomes 2.4Km Ende, Elephant and Castle, becomes Elephant und Schloss and sadly Piccadilly Circus, remains Piccadilly Circus. Surely there was an opportunity to make it Piccadilly Zirkus.

But what happens when you take another subway map and translate to English? Strangemaps found that if you take the Stockholm Metro map and translate to English you get some very 'Allo, Allo' style translations such as Baker's Bog, Bog Cottage, Suspenders Pen, Gruel Village and Awful Village Hospital

Detail from Stockholm Metro literal translation click to enlarge

As the map was sent to the blog by a Dane, they may not have been totally fair with some of the translations as the blogger at Strangemaps says "As is well known, Danes will grasp every opportunity to ridicule their Swedish neighbours". So if you can speak Swedish and think you've got a raw deal, please get in touch to correct.

Cheers to Jon for the heads-up on this.

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