Hulluttelu sopii kesään, hulluus voi viedä hengen

[Jukka Aho]

A reading exercise (an editorial opinion piece) about a recent tragical accident:

• Hulluttelu sopii kesään, [mutta] hulluus voi viedä hengen

[silk]

recent tragical accident

Tragic yes, but no accident. I agree with the editorial about the responsibility lying at least partially with the organizers, but I don't think this tragedy will hurt the reputation of Finnish sauna in the world as suggested in this last paragraph.

Aiheutuneen inhimillisen surun ohella kisasta lähti maailmalle myös viesti suomalaisen saunan vaarallisuudesta. Ei harmiton asia sekään.

It will be viewed as a stupid act and will soon be forgotten and replaced with other sensationalist news...

[otyikondo]

recent tragical accident

Tragic yes, but no accident. I agree with the editorial about the responsibility lying at least partially with the organizers, but I don't think this tragedy will hurt the reputation of Finnish sauna in the world as suggested in this last paragraph.

Aiheutuneen inhimillisen surun ohella kisasta lähti maailmalle myös viesti suomalaisen saunan vaarallisuudesta. Ei harmiton asia sekään.

It will be viewed as a stupid act and will soon be forgotten and replaced with other sensationalist news...

Maybe (never underestimate the brevity of human memory), but Harvia are getting out of Heinola faster than a hungry ferret goes up a trouser-leg, so they clearly wish to distance themselves from any adverse fallout.

People getting deaded in some funny foreign contraption that is all about nekkid people anyway is not likely to convert the sauna-sceptics. The already-converted have probably already BOUGHT their Finnish kiuas or sauna package.

If you were to read some of the utter garbage about sauna that is already being written on message boards and newspaper forums around the world - à la "but your blood boils at that temperature", you'd see there are plenty of people for whom GOOD publicity would be better than this.

[Rob A.]

A reading exercise (an editorial opinion piece) about a recent tragical accident:

• Hulluttelu sopii kesään, [mutta] hulluus voi viedä hengen

Thanks for the idea....I've roughly translated it, but it will take a while to "fine tune".... Even though I knew what it was about, it wasn't that easy....

And there are some of those Finnish "monster words". Hengissäsäilymistaistoksi...I haven't quite figured this one out...something about "in-life preserving"..????...and it's in the translative case, meaning an ongoing condition of some sort. Hengenvaarallisessa....terveydenhuoltoviranomaiset ...these two weren't too difficult..."in life threatening"...and "healthcare officials"

But this one I'm still puzzling over.... riskialttiimmaksi...something about "riskier"...and again in the translative....

[silk]

If you were to read some of the utter garbage about sauna that is already being written on message boards and newspaper forums around the world - à la "but your blood boils at that temperature", you'd see there are plenty of people for whom GOOD publicity would be better than this.

Maybe you are right, I'm giving too much credit to the average sauna cluetard. Never mind boiling your innards or dying in there, likening a sauna to a Thai massage parlour is hopelessly pervasive.

[otyikondo]

And there are some of those Finnish "monster words". Hengissäsäilymistaistoksi...I haven't quite figured this one out...something about "in-life preserving"..????...and it's in the translative case, meaning an ongoing condition of some sort.
But this one I'm still puzzling over.... riskialttiimmaksi...something about "riskier"...and again in the translative....

...that they permitted a competition that was questionable from the outset to change/morph into a battle/struggle for survival...

altis = prone, so literally "risk-prone", but you are close enough. Risky merely means "exposed to risk", after all... translative because once again there is a process going on - in this case a heightening of the risk.

[AldenG]

And in more detail...

altis, prone
alttiimpi, more prone
alttiimmaksi, becoming/made/etc more prone

The most common way to see altis is in the essive form (being prone, as prone), alttiina.

The sentence can be clarified a bit by writing it thus:

[Sellainen] Asetelma on aina riskialttiina, mutta se, että kisan lopussa olivat jäljellä henkilöt kahdesta maasta, teki sen vielä riskialttiimmaksi.

[Rob A.]

And in more detail...

altis, prone
alttiimpi, more prone
alttiimmaksi, becoming/made/etc more prone

The most common way to see altis is in the essive form (being prone, as prone), alttiina.

The sentence can be clarified a bit by writing it thus:

[Sellainen] Asetelma on aina riskialttiina, mutta se, että kisan lopussa olivat jäljellä henkilöt kahdesta maasta, teki sen vielä riskialttiimmaksi.

Thanks Alden...nice to see you back...and that you seem to have survived whatever befell you....and here, I had assumed you had disappeared due to "terminal boredom"...

So...my more or less, literal translation:

[Sellainen] Asetelma on aina riskialttiina, mutta se, että kisan lopussa olivat jäljellä henkilöt kahdesta maasta, teki sen vielä riskialttiimmaksi.

"Such a setting is always risk-prone, but it, that the competition's end was left with people from two countries, made it yet more risk-prone."


This is certainly more comprehensible to an English-speaker, but I wonder if this is at the expense of using a more natural "Finnish" way of expressing the ideas...???... Maybe as a "stop gap" measure it would be OK...and even completely understandable to a native speaker....but still not quite the way a "well-versed" native speaker would use his/her language...???....

[Rob A.]

.....This is certainly more comprehensible to an English-speaker, but I wonder if this is at the expense of using a more natural "Finnish" way of expressing the ideas...???... Maybe as a "stop gap" measure it would be OK...and even completely understandable to a native speaker....but still not quite the way a "well-versed" native speaker would use his/her language...???....

.....and I found this post in another language forum:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthre ... ost9437711

It discusses exactly the issue I was thinking about. I suppose my first question should be just exactly how accurate is the first statement...???:

"The trouble with sticking to että clauses is that nobody around us will be doing that unless we're only talking to foreigners. We still need to be able to understand what we're hearing, as että clauses are more the exception than the rule."

Is this really the situation?....that a native Finnish speaker would be much less likely to use an että clause than, say, an English-speaker....?? The attraction of the että clause being, of course, that it is a very familar form of grammatical construction in Germanic and Romance languages.....

And, for those who are interested, this forum is sometimes quite interesting....I've never posted here and only occasionally visit....

[Jukka Aho]

"The trouble with sticking to että clauses is that nobody around us will be doing that unless we're only talking to foreigners. We still need to be able to understand what we're hearing, as että clauses are more the exception than the rule."

Is this really the situation?....that a native Finnish speaker would be much less likely to use an että clause than, say, an English-speaker....??

The quote makes it sound like the että clauses were rather rare in native(-level) speech. I’m not sure if I can fully agree with that... sure, lauseenvastike (literally “equivalent-of-a-clause”) type expressions are commonly used in speech as well, and even more so in writing, as they can streamline the appearance of complicated sentences by making them less wordy, but I’d be inclined to say spoken Finnish is not in any way shy of using että, either... it’s rather the opposite in many situations.

(Cue in fast female speech style:)

“Sit mä tulin sieltä ja sanoin sille et[tä] sen pitää ymmärtää et[tä] se ei voi jatkaa tällä tavalla, et[tä] sen pitää niinku muuttuu ihmisenä, et[tä] tää koko juttu on niinku sen omaks parhaaks...”