r/funny • u/Addiction_Mediocre • 10h ago
Fun fact. The tv-show called Married... with children, was called "Våra värsta år" in Sweden, which translates to "Our worst years".
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u/phaesios 10h ago
It's an intentional play with words, since "Days of our lives" is translated to "Våra BÄSTA år" - "Our best years".
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u/Kinc4id 9h ago
I had to google "Days of our lives" and found out it is running for 61 years now! WTF? A character born in the first season would soon be old enough to retire. Crazy.
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u/svendburner 9h ago
British TV show Coronation Street has been running for 66 years. There's several dozens of episodes.
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u/EishLekker 9h ago
Several dozen episodes? It’s over 12000 episodes.
Maybe you meant several dozens of seasons?
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u/PoppaPopsen 9h ago edited 3h ago
It's a joke about how British shows have tended to have a lot fewer episodes per season than American shows
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u/svendburner 8h ago
Yes, thank you. That is indeed the joke I was trying to make.
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u/Zanian19 8h ago
A rather bad example though since that particular show have on average put out an episode every 2 days for 66 years.
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u/kratz9 8h ago
Those shows used to be very popular in the pre-cable days.
"Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. "
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u/Freudinatress 7h ago
They used to air it in Sweden as fillers in the afternoons. It was on in the background for my uni days ages ago.
The only thing I actually remember is that intro.
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u/Kinc4id 8h ago
Im not from the US but when I googled it the German name rang a bell. I knew it must be some soap opera. I don’t know how popular it was here in Germany, I never cared much for soap operas and I only know its name because Joey in Friends mentioned it a couple times.
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u/kratz9 8h ago
Popular with retired people and home makers here. In the US they always played in the middle of the day on Weekdays, so nobody with a regular job was into them. As a kid you'd see it on the TV when grandma was watching you during summer break. "I got to watch my stories."
There apparently was one show just called 'Soap' that was a parody of all the rediculous story tropes they would use. Reportedly funny, but I've never seen it
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u/Corfiz74 7h ago
It was called "Eine schrecklich nette Familie" in German (A terribly nice family). And it was quite popular in Germany, too - they even tried to do a terribly embarrassing German version, which was fortunately very short lived.
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u/Kinc4id 7h ago
I know. I’m from Germany. I even watched the German version back then. And yes, it was terrible. It was just the translated scripts of the original show which didn’t even make sense for something that should take place in Germany.
I was talking about „Zeit der Sehnsucht“.
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u/Corfiz74 7h ago
Oh, okay. Yeah, me, too, born in 1974, I guess we'd be about the same age, then.
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u/Kinc4id 6h ago
1983 actually. But I got a TV in my room pretty early and spent many nights watching TV.
Fun fact: Because it’s named „Eine schrecklich nette Familie“ and it only aired at night I thought it was a horror show, kinda like a scary version of the Munsters, and didn’t dare to watch it for a long time. lol
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u/thetrademarkcounter 6h ago
I talked to my dad the other day that John Oliver was guest starring in Days of our lives and General hospital. And he thought it was weird that they were rebooting those shows again. And when I mentioned that they aren’t rebooted, it’s still the same show running, he almost didn’t believe me.
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u/BigBiker05 6h ago
Soaps used to be a great gig for actors. Everyone wants to be a movie star, but soaps is about the most reliable work an actor could have. Year-round, 5 days a week. Rarely would get cancelled. Some famous actors got their start in soaps. However, they seem like a dieing breed now. My mom watched Guiding Light and As the World Turns. Both axed in 2010 after a 50+ year run.
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u/Addiction_Mediocre 10h ago
Yep, as a kid I always remember seeing both on tv. But at the time I could not understand the difference between the two names, just that I liked one of them better
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u/kjermy 8h ago
Isn't that the show that Joey in Friends is in? I didn't even know that was a real show before now
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u/phaesios 8h ago
Yeah it's one of the longest running shows in history IIRC: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058796/
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u/Jormungandi 10h ago
In German it was called „eine schrecklich nette Familie“ which translates to „a terribly nice family“.
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u/Wrong-Mixture 10h ago
In Belgium we call it ''That show we watch for 20-year old Christina Applegate"
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u/Arvamuseta 9h ago
In Estonia it's called "Tuvikesed", which in direct translation means group of pigeons. But this word can also mean cuddle birds
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u/breathing_normally 10h ago
In the Netherlands the show was called “Married … with Children” which is just jibberish in Dutch
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u/mageskillmetooften 9h ago
I'm so happy to have grown up in the Netherlands, a country that does not feel the need to translate absolutely everything.
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u/andeqaida 10h ago
I can top that. On Finland it was called "Pulmuset" which translates to "Snow Buntings" or snowbirds. Go figure 🤷😂
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u/kallekilponen 10h ago
I always figured it was supposed to be sarcastic.
”Puhdas kuin pulmunen” = ”as clean as a snow bunting” is a common saying in Finnish.
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u/ironic-hat 10h ago
Snowbirds in English is slang for people who leave colder weather cities during the winter, for warm ones in the South. I don’t recall the Bundy’s leaving Chicago, although that sounds like something their neighbors would do.
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u/jaysire 8h ago
Puhas pulmunen means ”clean (as a) bunting”, which is a Finnish synonym for innocence (because the birds are white and white is the color of innocence). So ”pulmuset” would translate to the ”squeaky clean family”, because ”-set” is suffix indicating for instance a family: ”Virtaset” = ”The Virtanen family”. So therein lies the sarcasm: The squeaky clean, innocent family is pretty close to the opposite of the Bundies.
Also, the Bundies -> the Buntings. Not too far off.
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u/andeqaida 10h ago
Same here, but obviously watching the show one realised really quickly that not one member of that family was cleanish lol
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u/noctalla 9h ago
Was the reference to Buntings a subtle play on their last name: Bundy? Did they also change the name of the family to Pulmuset? Or is it unrelated?
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u/LuceDuder 9h ago
Ive never seen the show but the "pulmunen" is associated with innocence in Finnish (due to some phrases).
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u/Sea-Celebration2429 6h ago
No their family name was Bundy. And that Buntlings had nothing to do with Bundy either, those former ppl were hallusinating like AI. The real translation would be The Lovebirds or The Innocents (irony). Later Estonians picked the same naming pattern as it was transmitted to their tv sets during cold war from Finland.
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u/cmnielsen 10h ago
Samme in Danish, "vores værste år"
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u/kirnehp 10h ago
Was Days of Our Lives: “Våres bæste år” as well?
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u/phionix33 10h ago
Nope, it was called Horton Sagaen. Horton being the original main character. The Swedish name is way better imo!
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u/Kandurux 9h ago
No, but I think it's because is shown on channels owned by the Viaplay Group, which is Swedish.
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u/duke78 1h ago
Yes, in fact, TV3 was the same channel in Denmark, Norway and Sweden during most of the day in the 80s and early 90s, but with different subtitles, so some shows got similar translated names. I even remember a show called "Hallo, Skandinavien" with a Norwegian host, a Danish host and a Swedish host together.
The Norwegian name is "Våre verste år".
Also, check out this wonderful tri-language channel ID jingle.
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u/Illustrious_Way_1141 9h ago
Yeah, some of our translations of movie/series titles are weird.. like the movie Airplane, in Swedish its called ”Titta vi flyger” which directly translates to ”Look we’re flying”
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u/Swedophone 9h ago
The German title must be the longest: "Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug".
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u/piercedmfootonaspike 8h ago
"My blue heaven", the Steve Martin movie, was translated to "hur jag lärde en FBI-agent dansa Marengo" - "how I taught an FBI agent to do the Marengo"
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u/riktigtmaxat 8h ago
That's still less bizarre than the Swedish title Det våras för Hitler for Mel Bay's the Producers and then just naming all his subsequent films variations of the same theme.
Det våras för literally means "it becomes spring for" and it's a weird idiom for something becoming popular.
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u/Substantial-Prior966 8h ago
Yeah but, “Det våras för Hitler” isn’t that weird since the show they are producing in The Producers is called “Springtime for Hitler”.
Naming all other Mel Brooks movies “Det våras för…” is weird though.
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u/Frydendahl 9h ago
In Denmark, we "translated" the movie title "Equilibrium" to "Cubic". They just straight up thought Danish people couldn't pronounce Equilibrium.
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u/According-Print4219 9h ago
Jokes on them because Danish people can’t pronounce “Cubic” either (or any other word).
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u/Blitcut 9h ago
They were right of course, but then again Danes can't pronounce any other word correctly for that matter.
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u/Freudinatress 7h ago
Oh. Sweden has been just as bad.
First came Dirty Dancing that made an actor famous. He made a new film called Next of Kin. That was too advanced a title for us poor stupid Swedes. So they renamed it - drumroll please - Dirty Fighting.
Even as a teenager I thought that was embarrassing.
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u/TommieSjukskriven 7h ago
Fawlty towers is "pang i bygget", which kind of translated to "bang in the construction" and days of our Lives is "våra bästa år" which is "our best years"
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u/Erik_Soop 3h ago
Bygget could mean building or home, the title comes from a Swedish movie from 1965, with kind of the same absurd humor.
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u/BongoProdigy 8h ago
It was a play on "Våra bästa år" meaning our best years which was the swedish name of Day of Our Lives.
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u/Sissilisko 8h ago
Lol, similar here. It's "hei me lennetään" which translates to "hey, we're flying"
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u/IvoShandor 8h ago
Al Bundy owned a home on a shoe salesman salary with 2 kids and a stay at home wife.
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u/Sothisismylifehuh 4h ago
I don't have any kids and still feel like there's not enough at the end of the month. I don't own a house or a car.
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u/Available_Slide1888 1h ago
I think this was a joke on the in Sweden also very popular tv-series Days of Our Lives. That one was called "Våra bästa år" (Our best years).
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u/medelmottig 9h ago
There's a show called "Days of our lives", that was translated to Våra bästa år "Our best years", and so, this title is a parody of that one: "Our worst years." :)
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u/No-Cloud9957 10h ago
Other fun fact: The show "Home Improvement" was titled "Hör mal wer da hämmert" in Germany, which translates to "listen to who is hammering". 😂
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u/fudgepuppy 10h ago
In Swedish it was "Tummen mitt i handen" = "Thumb in the middle of the hand"
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u/Sothisismylifehuh 4h ago
How the hell is this better than "Ti tommelfingre"?
This is why you keep losing wars to us, Sweden!
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u/elecrom 9h ago
Actually it was aired first under different titles (First 'Der Heimwerker' which is 'The DIY-Guy" and then "Der Dünnbrettböhrer" which literally means 'A person thst is only able to drill through thin planks" and translates to "The Idiot" or "The Weakling")with a different dub by a different channel, but the 'Hör mal wer da hämmert' version is the one that actually dubbed the whole show and is best remembered today
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u/FrontierPsycho 8h ago
Complete guess, but I wonder if this was a play on "Look who's talking now", which was released a couple of years before Home Improvement. Was that translated similarly in German?
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u/MySignIsToaster 9h ago
When it was aired first on ZDF it was called "Der Dünnbrettbohrer" (Somebody who drills thin boards: Somebody who is overconfident in his working skills while only doing easy work.)
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u/nonax 10h ago
Same in Norway, "Våre Verste År", our worst years. Grew up loving that show. No Ma'am!
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u/GeppaN 9h ago
Excuse me but we just called the show «Bundy» in Norway.
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u/PoppaPopsen 9h ago
Towards the end it was labeled as bundy, in the ancient times it was labeled as "våre verste år"
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u/gerrineer 9h ago
I could never figure out why he hated his wife she was hot
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u/mageskillmetooften 9h ago
All is pretty conservative, and Peggy doesn't clean, doesn't do the laundry, can't cook, doesn't work. But loves to spend his money at the barber and on new cloths.
She might have been hot, we all would have hated her if we got in a relation with her.
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u/Smoothguitar 8h ago
Don’t forget shoes 😂
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u/mageskillmetooften 8h ago
Yep, sure he landed the hottest babe from high school and now he is a huge coward who doesn't dare to divorce her because he still loves her in a way, and he dread of a life without marriage, but who else would put up with him..
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u/didndonoffin 9h ago
Yeah and dreaded the thought of being physical with her, Peggy would defo get it
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u/quagmirranseye 9h ago
I thought I had a special taste in women because I found her so attractive while in the show Al treats her like shes super ugly, I didnt understand that its just acting so when my friends would talk about what we like with girls I would get super nervous and change the subject because I was ashamed lmfao, old memory that popped up in my head scrolling here.
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u/marcelsounds 10h ago
Våra värsta Leela år?
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u/Addiction_Mediocre 10h ago
Yep, and with O'Neill playing Jay in Modern family. I think both was perfect casting.
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u/BarelyContainedChaos 9h ago
Sad it never got a proper ending. I would have loved to see Al hit the lotto or something. I always felt so bad when he was on top only to lose it all.
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u/StormDragyn 4h ago
Same name in Norway, Våre verste år.
Our tv series names from the time rarely natched this way. Not sure if we copied each other or if both had the same idea somehow. Feels too random, so likely not.
Also, most peoole just called the show Bundy anyway, I recognized the name as shared on op post, but had to double check if we did use it or Bundy officially 🤣
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u/Perzival22 4h ago
Tv3 was originally a Swedish channel and had broadcasting on Norway, Sweden and danmark. That's why the morning kid show was in all three languages. The frog named skurt had a hat with all three flags.
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u/yourmomsnutsarehuge 10h ago
Many people don't realize the mother was voiced by Leela from Futurama.
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u/Sufficient_Language7 10h ago
Isn't it the other way around. Peggy Bundy voiced Leela?
She also played a cross over character in Futurama being Peggy Bundy.
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u/bertzie 10h ago
Less fun fact: This show would never work today. A single income household, stay at home parent, a car, a house in the suburbs, all on a shoe salesmans salary? No one would believe it.
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u/vulpinefever 7h ago
Even in the 80s and 90s, part of the joke was that there was no way they'd be able to remain afloat. It's meant to be an parody of sitcom tropes taken to their very extreme, even in the 80s people were like "How the hell does Al afford this house???" That was the joke.
Al's car was a twenty year old, rusted out Dodge Dart with literally over a million miles. They literally had no food in their house and regularly had meals consisting of a single kraft single shared between the four of them.
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u/kratz9 8h ago
I feel like at the time it was one of the more reasonable citcom family houses. Full House had a giant ass SanFran townhouse. Family Matters had a bigass house. MwC basically had the couch and a pan left to the kitchen/dining table.
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u/Pet_Velvet 9h ago
Here the show "Desperate Housewives" was called "Täydelliset Naiset" = "Perfect Women"
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u/NoteVegetable4942 9h ago
It is a play on ”våra bästa år”. Which is says of our lives.
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u/Kotsida123 8h ago
The mind fuck is even more perplexing than that seeing as this was some very specific inside joke involving the translation of Days of our Lives.
Swedish title translations are the leading cause of cancer deaths during that period.
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u/Timmar92 8h ago
Sweden has some dumb names for English stuff, National Lampoon's Vacation is called "Ett päron till farsa!" Here, it exactly translates to "A pear for a dad!".
When I was a kid, Batman was called "Läderlappen" here, that translates to "leather note".....
I honestly don't know why, fortunately we did start to just use the English titles for most things because the Swedish titles wasn't even translations, they barely resembled the original title.
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u/DoodlingSloth 8h ago
Läderlappen is leather patch, not leather note. "Lappen" can be translated to both but context matters. It's still quite weird though.
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u/janerikgunnar 6h ago
Well, Batman IS from the 30s and läderlapp is an old name for bat. And if you think of it, our modern word for bat is also hilarious (literally "flapping mouse" or something).
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u/myrmonden 7h ago
… larping the Swedish language are we ?
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u/Acceptable_One_7072 7h ago
Who the fuck knows the name of a particular family of bats off the top of their head
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u/myrmonden 7h ago
alla svenskar vet att det är ett anant ord för fladermus.
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u/Timmar92 8h ago
Yeah you're right, I was a little too fast with the translations in my head there.
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u/Training-Chain-5572 5h ago
Läderlapp is a species of bats, hence the name
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u/Catmole132 3h ago
Which, while still a bit weird sounding as a superhero name, does sound better than fladdermusmannen
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u/Over_Raccoon6462 7h ago
In Norway we called Batman "Lynvingen" which translates to something like "flash wing". The direct translation of Batman is "Flaggermusmannen", so I can understand why they needed to change it.
Flaggermus (bat) literally means flapping mouse. If they did a direct translation he would be "Flapping mouse man". Not exactly something which strikes fear into the heart of criminals. But on the other hand it might go nicely along with a Adam West style Batman.
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u/Nyzan 2h ago
Worth noting that "päron" ("pear") is slang for "goof" in this context. "päron" is also a common slang for a parent.
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u/Late-Yogurt-9937 2h ago
According to the guy who originally translated the title into Swedish, though, the decision for the word "päron" in it had a deeper meaning. As I listened to a news segment on SR (Sveriges Radio) a while ago, the was a guy in his High School/College class who usually referred to his parents as "vilka dj**la päron", which might even indicate that he meant something like "nitwits" or "dimwits". So basically, the Swedish title in this context means "A Nitwit of A Dad".
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u/Pillens_burknerkorv 8h ago
Because läderlapp is the swedish word for bat…
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u/Internal-Answer7924 7h ago
Its the swedish name for the specifick family of bats in our region https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4derlappar?wprov=sfla1
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u/vulpinefever 7h ago
Foreign movie titles are my favourite. Like how every Mel Brooks movie released in Sweden until the 1990s was "Springtime for X" or how every comedy movie in Norway was "Help, we're X!" or how France retitles movies in English but with an easier to understand title (The Hangover became "Very Bad Trip")
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u/disturbed94 7h ago
It probably was adapted to Batman because of the Operetta die Fledermaus that also (and before Batman) was translated to “Läderlappen”. That is my theory at least.
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u/reallyhotgirlwhoshot 2h ago
My kids love Hot Wheels: Let's Race...and I couldn't believe it the first time I spotted the Swedish translation in the credits - Hot Wheels: Full Fart...I mean, the translation probably makes sense, but it's pretty funny in English.
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u/CapTension 1h ago
Fart translates to speed, which is kind of funny when you read that the police was setting up a fartkontroll.
It also translates to way of passage, commonly discovered by tourists seeing the road signs saying infart or utfart
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u/janerikgunnar 6h ago
Well, there are good translations and bad translations. I'd argue a movie like "Project Hail Mary" would have deserved a better name over here because almost no one here understands what a "hail mary" actually is. (In French for example, it's basically called "Project Last Chance").
The worst ones are when the English name gets translated to... another English name. The movie "Everything must go" is called "Neighbor for sale". "Miss Congeniality" is called "Miss Secret Agent". I get why they did it - we don't have the cultural references - but for the love of god, picking another English name just puts our poor confidence on full display.
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u/Wonderful_Limit7033 1h ago
Leatherpatch would be a better translation. Reason for that name is that "läderlapp" is old swedish slang for bat.
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u/SorryContribution483 1h ago
Norway too, national lampoon is translated to:hjelp vi skal på ferie. Which means: help, we’re going on vacation 🤣
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u/Strange_Formal 50m ago
I think we had some great translations of Bond movies. "Älskade spion" for example. But then again, I'm very much pro Swedish language. Use it!
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u/RetroGame77 36m ago
Läderlapp is actually the Swedish name of Vespertilionidae, a family of bats. Every bat in Sweden belongs to the Läderlapp family.
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u/Znaleziatko 9h ago
In Poland, it was called "Świat według Bundych" which means "The World According to the Bundy's".
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u/adelie42 8h ago
How many people wish that was their problem and believe it is far more than they could ever achieve? Family, two kids and a dog, 2 story, 3 bedroom house, all afforded on the salary of a shoe salesman. Their biggest problems are that the wife's sex drive exceeds that of the husband, he tells the same old man stories every day, and she's a terrible cook. And for all their issues, they were THEIR issues, and nobody dare fuck with them, because as a loyal unit, hell would rain down on anyone that dare mess with any one of them. But absent that, they just spend their days trash talking each other.
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u/bythisriver 7h ago
in Finland the show was called Pulmuset which sort of means "lovebirds"
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u/Pandabirdy 7h ago
Sounds better than the literal "the pigeons" it translates to tbh. Though I've heard of love pigeons so I guess it makes sense. Also they kinda act like pigeons now that I think of it.
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u/gregrejlkg32 7h ago
It's actually pretty smart if you consider american classic "Days of our lives" was known here as "Våra bästa" år or "Our best years". So it's a pun on that which makes sense since the show is in a lot of ways the antithesis of that (e.g wholesome happy american family drama vs disfunctional unhappy american family drama).
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u/shanster925 7h ago
The French translation for Home Alone is "Maman, j'ai raté l'avion !" which means "Mom, I missed the plane!"
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u/Koffeinberoende 3h ago
Many TV-shows (and movies) were getting Swedish titles back then.
Some examples I can think of from the top of my head are:
"Days of Our Lives" - Våra bästa år (Our best years)
"The Persuaders!" - Snobbar som jobbar (Fancy guys that work)
"Heart to Heart" - Par i hjärter (Pair of hearts)
"Moonshiners" - Par i brott (Pair in crime)
This trend also came back to bite us in the proverbial ass, when we couldn't call "License to Kill" Med rätt att döda, as would be the best translation because that name had been used for "Dr. No" (Agent 007 med rätt att döda). Instead it was named "Tid för hämnd" (Time for revenge).
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u/Discombobulated_Back 2h ago
In German It wes: "Eine schrecklich nette Familie" What would translate to "a horrible nice Family".
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u/Yhaqtera 9h ago
I think a more accurate translation would be something like "The worst of times".
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u/doctormirabilis 9h ago
It’s a play on ’Våra bästa år’ (Our Best Years) which was the title for the soap opera Days of our lives.
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