Thursday 16 May 2013

Misunderstandings

We are thinking about buying an investment apartment in Bagnere rather than trying to convert some part of the barn in to a gite as we think it would be more cost effective plus having the benefit that the people staying there are not on our doorstep. We went to look round a place a few weeks ago, bref - as the French say - meaning 'to cut a long story short'. We wanted to put an offer in, someone got in before us, I mortally offended the nice agent lady.
She very kindly translated her emails in to English. Here is a short example. Generally we could just about make out what she was trying to say, but it would have been easier in French
'I is sent to you an e-mail on Monday, April 29th for you exliquez what take place, the customer wait to make a decision, it does not have to refuse mine. He(it) have to confirm me if it was made with the other customer because he(it) he(it) waited his(its) answer'
When she told us that the owner had another offer I replied in English 'That's a shame'. Normally I wrote to her in French but I was in a rush and I was frustrated as we had waited a long time for this news as she (and most of France) went on holiday for a week as May is pretty much all bank holiday in France.
I would translate this in to French as 'Il est dommage' or something like but google translate translates it as C'est une honte. I am not sure the sentence is good French, but honte means shameful or ashamed so the nice estate agent lady thought I was telling her she was shameful or something like that.
She sent me a long email explaining how she had done the best she could and she had nothing to be ashamed of etc. I sent her one back explaining where I thought the translation had gone wrong. So everything is ok now! We are probably going to see a couple of other flats with her next week.

We do use google translate a lot when communicating with people by email, but we are always very careful to use it just for certain spelling and conjugations rather than just putting the rambling you have written in English in and giving it free rein. It is an amazing tool, but it can come out with a lot of nonsense too!

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