'Välkommen Åter' Does Not Mean 'Welcome Back'

I am by no means fluent in Swedish, but I do not work as a translator nor am I in the sign making business. Now, my complaint.

Swedes are, in general, excellent English speakers. It is a mandatory part of the education program here starting at a very early age. They are exposed to a tremendous amount of English as films and television programs are subtitled rather than dubbed, and most Swedes choose to read books written by English speaking authors in English rather than their Swedish translations. With that said they do make some mistakes every now and then, most of which are understandable. But, in some cases, they really make you stop and think. This is one of them.

When you are leaving a place, let it be a store, restaurant, website, etc. there is nearly always a sign on the door stating "Välkommen Åter", which is fine. The problem comes when they translate it into English at places that are often visited by tourists, travelling businessmen, native English speakers, etc and put "Welcome Back" underneath.

Now, "Välkommen Åter" basically translates to something along the lines of "we look forward to your return" or "you are very welcome to come back". Sort of like the signs in the States that say "Thank you for your patronage. Please call again." However, if you directly translate "välkommen" you get "welcome", and "åter"gives you "back" or "again". Hence "Welcome Back", hence the issue.

Yes, direct translations are common, and often very bad. But. in this case. it's not that you can't say "welcome back". You can. The problem is that you can't say it to someone when they are leaving. You say it when they come back. Otherwise you are welcoming people back into the outside world. Which is a bit disturbing.

You might be thinking, "Well, what does it matter if people make little signs, that say that, and put them on their shop doors? They're just being polite." If that was the only case of this mistake then I wouldn't have bothered to write this article. No, you see this at large international hotels, I've seen them at American owned companies, supposedly Irish/British pubs, and they used to have a huge one at Stockholm's International Airport. (Where it almost works if you think of it from the perspective of a Swede returning from vacation in Mallorca or Phuket, who also happens not to speak Swedish.) So you see, it has become the acceptable form of a term that it actually has the exact opposite meaning of.

So, please, shop owners, sign makers, translators, web designers, etc., take note of this and change the way you express this statement. Otherwise you are just confusing people.

Here are some examples I found on the web - read the photo captions down to the last one - glad to be back here again - and here it's even more complex.

K Panda