opengl rotation

ok i have been fiddling around and i have a problem when i rotate something in opengl and then translate it, it refuses to rotate around its own origin, instead it rotates around the original origin, what am i doing wrong here? i have seen some really complicated camera code which is probably similar to what i am doing except i am looking at this "camera" or "object" through another camera anyway if you know where i can find out how to do this correctly, just like how the space ship moves in asteroids that would be great ps. i had a look at some asteroid code and i got everything to work except it still rotates around the same damn point, hell i even got the friction to work, so... any help would be nice