"That is not a ticket. Look! It is not a ticket. It is not a guilty ticket."
I listened, and it took me a second to really "hear" what she had said. It was an embarrassing example of the kind of Swenglish that sounds so natural to a Swede speaking with a Swedish "frame of reference" that we almost can't hear how badly we goof. My favorite example of this kind of awful mistake is when a Swede asks, in all innocence, if an official of some sort wants to see his or her leg. Yes, because ID is really called leg in Swedish.
What about the guilty ticket? In Swedish we say that a valid ticket is a "giltig" ticket, or, in full Swedish, "en giltig biljett". The ticket controller on the train was automatically "translating" "en giltig biljett" into "a guilty ticket". What is worse, I made the same translation, so that I immediately "heard" her say "a valid ticket" when she really said "a guilty ticket".
There is of course some sort of similarity in the meaning of "guilty" and the meaning of "valid". Both have something to do with truth. It is true that a guilty person has done something bad, and it is true that a valid ticket is the required "payment" for a journey.
And who knows, maybe this man is hiding a guilty ticket somewhere on his person. No, wait, it is not a possibility that he is hiding a guilty ticket; Id' say that it is a certainty that he is doing it.
Ann
