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My eggs are not amused...

It started with a friend asking me to check a web site. It was down, so I googled its name to see if any news was posted. Only one story, but that in Swedish. So I ran it through Systranet which offers free Swedish to English translation.

You can read the original story, in Swedish, here. The story includes the word "centrumutveckling" - which is pretty much the name of the web site, if you put www at the start and .se at the end. And it's down, or dead (or most likely, being rebuilt). But that word ("shopping centre development") trapped Google which, in turn, caught Systranet in an idiom idiocy.

Here's the phrase:

"Båda gatorna är besvärliga. Det ska bli skönt att inte behöva hålla äggen i näven när man kommer ut från Domus med kundvagnen, säger Björn Jönsson."

Ignoring the fact that the name "Björn" doesn't normally get interpreted as "Bear" the translation given is literally OK: 

"Both streets are difficult. It will become comfortable to not to need to amuse the eggs the handful when one comes out from Domus with the shopping-cart, bear says Jönsson."

I have a friend who actually speaks Swedish, and she fell about. "Literally, that phrase means, 'to hold the eggs in the fist'. It actually means, "to take your life in your hands," she explained.

Here, she says,"it's a neat play on words: because he's talking about doing so when coming out of a supermarket (Domus) with your shopping trolley."

I'm NOT going to listen to anybody who wants to start discussing handling their eggs any other way, idiomatic, or not...