I have a friend who is Swedish, and my all time favorite isn’t a movie, but a comic book. Batman translated into Läderlappen. So after some discussion about that period in time and how things were being translated I asked, well then what did Robin translate to, and he looked at me and said “Robin”. I almost fell out of my chair. So he brought me a copy of Läderlappen and Robin. I love it.
I am not sure, but to tie this all back together, the whole conversation came up when we were talking about how, when you kill a bat in Valheim it drops leather.
So “läderlapp” is an old Swedish slang or colloquialism for bat. Back in the 50s when Batman was first brought to Sweden English literacy was a lot worse than it is now, and translating titles and names were much more common. A direct translation of Batman would be “fladdermusmannen” - which is a very unwieldy name - so they settled for a then-more-common slang for “the bat”. It does sound a little better, though it would have been best to just do what finally happened from the 80s and let Batman remain untranslated.
I have a friend who is Swedish, and my all time favorite isn’t a movie, but a comic book. Batman translated into Läderlappen. So after some discussion about that period in time and how things were being translated I asked, well then what did Robin translate to, and he looked at me and said “Robin”. I almost fell out of my chair. So he brought me a copy of Läderlappen and Robin. I love it.
That’s so funny. I just though Läderlappen just sounds like german for “leather rag” and google does in fact translates it to “The Leather patch”.
I wonder what their thought process was in coming up with leather patch for badman.
I am not sure, but to tie this all back together, the whole conversation came up when we were talking about how, when you kill a bat in Valheim it drops leather.
So “läderlapp” is an old Swedish slang or colloquialism for bat. Back in the 50s when Batman was first brought to Sweden English literacy was a lot worse than it is now, and translating titles and names were much more common. A direct translation of Batman would be “fladdermusmannen” - which is a very unwieldy name - so they settled for a then-more-common slang for “the bat”. It does sound a little better, though it would have been best to just do what finally happened from the 80s and let Batman remain untranslated.
Läderlappen would be a great term for Harley riders.