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English to Frensh phrases. Help needed with translation.
Europe trip is fast approaching and i thought it wise to put some relevant phrases in writing for the French portion of my trip> in Italy i will be fine but i cant speak a word of French so needed a little help. The online translators are pant from what i can tell. So if anyone can translate the following i would appreciate it tonnes!
I have a flat tyre! My bike wont go! Do you know a garage that could help me? Im out of petrol! Do you know where I can get petrol? Is there a camp site close by? Can I camp here just for 1 night please? Do you have a room for one person for one night please? How much? Do you have secure parking or a garage for my bike? Bottled water? Drinking water? Where can I get food close by? Is there a toilet close buy? Where are the toilets? I need medical help! Is there a hospital close by? Call an ambulance for me! Ive crashed my bike! Here are my medical details. Im lost. Which way to �........? Cheers for any help guys and gals! Dan |
Try Babel Fish.
Always close enough for me. |
Will give it a go. Cheers
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Translating useful phrases is OK - but will you understand the reply?
Phrase books only work if both parties are prepared to conduct a conversation while both reading from the same phrase book !!! :-) |
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Dorling Kindersley do a compact phrasebook for 14 languages, including pronunciation, which in my experience is the biggest problem to communication (remembering how the guy at the bar fell off his stool laughing at TenereDoug asking for a table in Portuguese)
ISBN - 0-7513-2144-3 Cost about �6, and can easily fit in your pocket, a little bigger round the edges and twice the thickness of an iPhone Mine has seen service all over the place and it's quite useful as both parties can see the text. If you start any conversation with 'hello' (in native tounge) this usually leads to the rest of the chat being in english! |
If you've got an iPhone... there's an app for that (�0.69 called teletext see link:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frenc...378079493?mt=8 ) which even speaks the phrase to the unsuspecting frenchman or frenchlady, because believe you me, you might have all the phrase books in the world, but if you read it with a broken accent chances are, they won't understand a bleeping word of it! :rant2::happy6:
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Maybe try this, it works for me.
Learn how to say ' I'm sorry, I don't speak French' in French first, plus thankyou and excuse me. I found that a lot of answers come back in English and at least You've made the first approach and the person will appreciate that. Then learn single words - hospital - where - bank - garage etc as back up in case they do not speak Englsih. This coupled with a few hand gestures might get you through. |
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Have you ever been to France? 1) the majority of them hate anything English 2) they will not make an effort to speak whatever little English they have but rather expect you to "parlez francaise". 3) They have dodgy toilets where you have to do your No.2's standing up :icon_puke_l: 4) and...(I'll probably get banned for saying this) they're French! :D |
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1) True, but you deserve that :sign10: 2) This has changed a lot in recent years. In fact most of the people I've met actually (attempted to) speak English to anyone they suspected of being a foreigner. Even if their English is totally and utterly unintelligible and your French is near-perfect. 3) Can't argue with this one 4) Unfortunately that hasn't changed yet :laughing6: But to get back on topic: the phrases are really of little use if you don't know how to correctly pronounce them. They'll even have a harder time to understand what you are saying because they can't make out whether you are speaking English or French ;) And as been said above, if you don't understand any French answers you may be given, what's the point? Besides, the most important words are nearly the same in French and English anyway. They'll understand well enough when you say police, hospital, garage, doctor, ... |
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If you're in fairly well travelled bits of France, and you're dealing with people in tourism/service industries (hotels, campsites, restaurants, etc) it can be quite difficult to have a conversation in French IME, unless you're very fluent (which I am far from), because your accent will betray you with the first thing you say and the reply will come back in English. I've had some very bizarre conversations with French people where we've both been determined to speak in the other persons native tongue :D |
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Same kind of approach has just worked in Italy too! |
mon a�roglisseur est plein d'anguilles
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Le singe est dans l'arbre
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Je n'ai jamais entendu autant poubelles!
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@all I have to agree i find the French very rude, been there many times and driven through the country lots but at the end of the day if im in their country i want to make the effort even if all it results in is them having a laugh at the idiot talking something other than french. Once i get to Italy im fine and can normally make myself understood with my broken vocab. Not long now. Looking forward to my first bike road trip. Its been a long time coming! |
Have a great time -
enjoy:smilies1349:
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Cheers Graham. Im off in the morning!
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