The Guardian has interviewed Danish stand up comedian Sofie Hagen, who started her comedy career in Denmark, but now lives in the UK and performs in English, in an interesting article that digs into how a routine can be adapted into a different language. “You almost have to be 100 times funnier to be funny in Danish,” says Hagen. “If I wanted to construct an English sentence that was funny, I have a lot more words to choose between. In Danish, there’s only one way of doing that sentence, so you have to be really creative.” As for the ‘practicalities’ of switching languages, according to Hagen, while Danish material easily translated into English, new jokes written in English required rewrites and testing at open mics to make them funny in Danish. Hagen also noticed that UK comedians’ funniest jokes often wouldn’t work written down, but “a Danish comedian’s joke will always work on paper”. This means a different vibe at comedy nights: in Denmark, there’s no audience interaction and comedians stick to a script, whereas in the UK shows are chattier and there are also different forms of comedy, while “in Denmark, we didn’t have alternative comedy. If anyone came on stage dressed up, we’d be like, ‘No, absolutely not. This is not comedy,’” says Hagen. Read the full article, with interviews to several other comedians and experts, on Theguardian