this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
346 points (99.1% liked)

Microblog Memes

9117 readers
2445 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ReadyUser31@lemmy.world
aeronmelon@lemmy.world
needanke@feddit.org
346
Damn (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 days ago by Smackyroon@lemmy.ml to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 32 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Someone came up with a reasonble explination: https://www.tumblr.com/adobe-outdesign/tagged/this%20post%20has%20everything...%20language...%20mistranslations...%20impregnated%20goblins...

This is a hilarious mistranslation actually. I suspect it originally said something along the lines of “Impregnerad mot vatten”, i.e. “Water proof”.

Impregnering is the process of making a material resistant to water/heat. The swedish word for water (vatten) is similar to the word for goblin (vätten) so I guess there was a mixup.

It’s also possible “goblin” was used as a translation of “tomte”, the creature depicted riding the wagon, with impregnated referring to the matches being made of impregnated wood. The implication of the two words combined in English might not have occurred to whoever designed it, since “impregnerad” isn’t really used in that meaning in Swedish.

“Impregnerad mot vatten/vätten” would more likely have been translated as “impregnated against water/goblin”. The absence of “against” would make it very clunky in both English and Swedish, which kinda points against it.

[–] mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Did some Google searching myself:

The JWT stands for Jönköping Westra Tändstickfabrik, one of the major matchstick factories in Sweden before they consolidated into the Zyn company.

https://thoresmatches.se/tandsticksfabriker/jonkopings_westra_tandsticksfabrik.htm

You can see in the matchbox pixtures in the page above, that they did use the term "impregnerade" to refer to their chemical treatment on the matchsticks.

This article says that the impregnation treatment was beneficial because it made matches blow out quickly without smoldering:

https://thoresmatches.se/tandsticksfabriker/sakerhetstandstickan.htm

This post on the SomethingAwful forums seems to show an original photo of the match boxes, posted by someone with a Swedish username.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3948652&pagenumber=9#post521474833

These matches don't seem to be recorded in many museums, so probably either a modern gag, a period knock-off, or genuinely a Swedish person who didn't realize that impregnerade had a double meaning in English.

There is a matchstick museum in Jönköping, Sweden that could probably answer.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 3 points 4 days ago

the fact that the factory was in jönköping means that there is a distinct possibility that the word "goblin" is a mistranslation of "vättern", which is the big lake jönköping sits on.

[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Thanks for the research! I will send the museum an email and ask if they know anything.

or genuinely a Swedish person who didn’t realize that impregnerade had a double meaning in English.

Or perhaps someone who knew what they were doing (but more likely not). Perhaps a way to market them outside of Sweden, though that really depends on when this was.