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.

[–] norimee@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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 batman.

[–] FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 2 points 1 month ago

Läderlappen would be a great term for Harley riders.