English translation

Simply Sauna

• 1. The title of the song is surprisingly difficult to translate. “Bara” means “just” or “simply”, but in a different way than in English. “Bada bastu” literally translates to something like “bathe sauna” or “bathe bathhouse” if you wanna be even more literal, which does not cleanly translate as a verb into English. Something like “sauna-ing” would be most accurate. I’ve chosen to translate this as “simply sauna” to maintain the alliteration present in Swedish into English.
• 2. “Nåja” can mean very many different things, that are all hard to translate. Sometimes it’s used as an interjection to encourage some to answer a previously stated but unanswered question, sometimes it expresses reluctant acceptance or partial disagreement, and sometimes it can mean “so what?”, all depending on the tone of voice and context. Here it’s being used like “well” or “so” or “alright” is in English, to open a new topic of conversation.
• 3. The song is sung in the Vörå dialect of Österbotten, Finland. Aside from Åland, this is where Swedish has the strongest foothold in Finland.
• 4. Literally “all worries [shall] soon disappear”
• 5. Arja Saijonmaa is a bilingual Finnish singer who’s been active in both countries, having participated in Melodifestivalen 1987, 2005 and 2019, as well as hosting the show in 2000. Tango is yet another major point of Finnish-Swedish cultural exchange.
• 6. This line is in Finnish. While most Finns are able to have a conversation in Swedish, due to it being a mandatory subject in school, most Swedes don’t speak Finnish at all. Being able to count to three in Finnish however, is very common, and here it’s being used as a punchline.
• 7. Literally “Sauna brothers, we’re the ones who glow”. The phrase “bastubröder” (“sauna-brothers”) is a play on words of “vapenbröder” meaning “brothers in arms” which describes Sweden and Finland. I’ve chosen to capitalise this, to emphasise that it’s a set phrase.
• 8. This is a bilingual pun, as “hetta” in Swedish means to heat up, and “heittää” in Finnish means to throw, in this case throwing more water on a sauna which causes it to heat up.
• 9. This is also in Finnish, a common swear word.
• 10. Literally “it’s on the warm [side] here”
• 11. In the Nordics, many products have labels in all major Nordic languages. All radiators have multilingual warning labels, to the point where each country’s respective way of saying “do not cover” is a common joke phrase. It’s a bit like, as an English speaker, saying “¿Dónde esta la biblioteca?” to poke fun at Spanish.