Swedish: har ansvariga varit senfärdiga

[kfz2010]

This sentence:

Detta virus har ansvariga varit senfärdiga med att hejda.

from DN reads difficult for me. How shall we understand "ansvariga" and "senfärdiga" here?

Thanks.

 

[MattiasNYC]

(people) "responsible" (for doing something)
"slow" (to do something)

In that order.

 

[kfz2010]

Thanks. So is it a short version of:

Detta virus har ansvariga [som har] varit senfärdiga med att hejda.

 

[MattiasNYC]

Thanks. So is it a short version of:

Detta virus har ansvariga [som har] varit senfärdiga med att hejda.

To me that doesn't look right. In English your sentence above would read as "This virus has responsible people"... but the virus doesn't have responsible people, what is being said is that there are people, and those people are responsible for something (stopping the virus). I think you can see what the problem is if you change a couple of words:

" Detta företag har anställda som har varit..."
"This business has employees that have been..."

If I were to rewrite the original sentence I would maybe write:

Original: "Detta virus har ansvariga varit senfärdiga med att hejda."
New: "De ansvariga har varit senfärdiga med att hejda detta virus."
EN: "Those responsible have been slow to stop this virus."

 

[kfz2010]

Thanks! It looks like the original sentence has shuffled around the components heavily, the subject, the object etc., making it difficult to understand I would say.

 

[MattiasNYC]

I agree. For a non-native speaker it's less easy to understand. I don't actually particularly care for it either to be honest.

 

[AutumnOwl]

The sentence could also be written as: Att hejda detta virus har ansvariga varit senfärdiga med (to stop this virus those responsible have been slow with.) Not very good English, and not much better in Swedish, but the formulation in Swedish is about what the author have wanted to put the most importance on in the sentence, the virus, those responsible, or the slow response.

 

[Den falska sköldpaddan]

Thanks! It looks like the original sentence has shuffled around the components heavily, the subject, the object etc., making it difficult to understand I would say.

To me the sentence quoted in post #1 reads tolerably well. As AutumnOwl said, this is a case of emphasis. In Swedish syntax it is not unusual that a part of sentence (and often the direct object) is emphasized by placing it first. As in

Jag känner honom. = I know him.
Honom känner jag. = I know him.

 

[serbianfan]

To me the sentence quoted in post #1 reads tolerably well

I agree. Scandinavians are used to "shuffling around" words for emphasis, and I don't think they would find the sentence particularly difficult to understand.