Ukrainian: Візміть місце

[Szkot]

In a BBC drama series - The Nest - the characters visit a medical clinic 'abroad'. On the wall is a sign:

Приймальня
Будь ласка, візміть місце і чекати, щоб називатися. This is meant to mean Reception. Please take a seat and wait to be called.

I guess this is just a bad translation, but I wonder whether the idiom візміть місце actually exists in Ukrainian. Somewhere, possibly in Russian, I have seen it used to mean 'take place' (of an event), but that may have been wrong as well.

 

[ahvalj]

Somewhere, possibly in Russian, I have seen it used to mean 'take place' (of an event), but that may have been wrong as well.

In Russian, it does exist: займите место “take your place”.

 

[ohhell]

I think in Ukraine we say something like присядьте "take a seat'
And займіть місце "take a place" we use more for transport.
For example, when you are on a bus and a driver tells you to "take a place/seat" займіть місце which in this case means something like 'you don't need to stand as there is a free place to sit' or if you bought a plane ticket and stewardess tells you, 'take a seat' which in this case means that you had bought a ticket, so you should sit on a place which is stated on the ticket...

I'm not sure if I got your question in the right way but I hope I helped a little bit...

 

[Szkot]

Thank you. I wondered how correct the Ukrainian was; it sounded a bit unnatural. Also I thought the use of називатися might be a mistake.

 

[ohhell]

Thank you. I wondered how correct the Ukrainian was; it sounded a bit unnatural. Also I thought the use of називатися might be a mistake.

Yep, називатися is a mistake here, also verbs are used in the wrong way.
The right way to say it would be, 'Будь ласка, присядьте й почекайте, Вас покличуть.' - 'Please, take a seat and wait to be called'

'Приймальня' and 'Будь ласка' are fine ( by the way, people sometimes mistakenly write Будь ласка with a hyphen like Будь-ласка but it's wrong so I'm glad they at least didn't make that mistake

If you have any other questions about the Ukrainian language, I'll be glad to answer them ( at least those questions which about I know ).
Have a good day!

 

[Szkot]

Thank you. I know very little Ukrainian, but I thought it looked wrong in the television series, like someone had looked up the words one by one in a dictionary

There was also a sign pointing to номери консультантів which I guess was also wrong.

 

[ohhell]

I've never heard anything like this, it's must be wrong but I don't know what they meant to say by that so it's kind of hard to explain it to you.

"номери" can be referred to hotel rooms but as it's a medical clinic maybe they wanted to say 'hospital wards/rooms'
It seems to me that they just combined a little bit unrelated words because I just can't figure it out

I've found that photo but still can't figure out what they meant xd

 

[Szkot]

In Britain senior hospital doctors are called consultants, but also clinics have consulting rooms, where examinations and minor medical procedures are carried out.

Whatever they meant, they made a mess of it. Thanks for all your help.

 

[Panceltic]

Just my 2p, there's also something distinctively off with these signs in terms of their design. Is it the colour combination or font choices, I don't know, but you wouldn't see such a thing in real life.

 

[ohhell]

Just my 2p, there's also something distinctively off with these signs in terms of their design. Is it the colour combination or font choices, I don't know, but you wouldn't see such a thing in real life.

Yep, I think the font on the first sign is especially off. Although those colours look pretty similar to what we use in Ukraine.

 

[Slogos]

Looks like one of those word-for-word machine translations. Although, this is much better than switching your keyboard to Cyrillic and typing English words...

 

[Apricity]

"Будь ласка, візміть місце і чекати, щоб називатися" - To me, how we usually put it in good Ukrainian is: "Просимо Вас сісти та чекати, поки Вас не покличуть". Of course, there may be different ways to convey the meaning; you may use, for example, the word "присісти" instead of "сісти", although the word "присісти" originally meaning only "to squat" assumed also the meaning of "to sit down for a moment" only recently (decades ago) under the influence of the other language, especially when Ukrainian was proclaimed the state language, and non-Ukrainian speakers started to massively use Ukrainian (among other things) adding to Ukrainian words others meanings. An illustrative example is the famous statement, so often used by politicians "Україна відбулась".