foreign ebayers

cyberstar

Do you ever get questions sent to you in foreign European languages? I get a quite few from time to time. If they can understand my listing in english then I assume they'll ask me questions in english as well but no, they sometimes ask in French or German etc..

Yesterday this message was sent to me

'Qu'en est il de mon colis? jusqu'à ce jour je n'ai encore de nouvelles.'

Do they actually expect all of us to understand this?

Well, good thing I found this great translation tool then

http://www.google.com/language_tools

nightswimmer

cyberstar wrote:

Do you ever get questions sent to you in foreign European languages? I get a quite few from time to time. If they can understand my listing in english then I assume they'll ask me questions in english as well but no, they sometimes ask in French or German etc..

What makes you think they can understand your English? If say you are looking for a CD by some obscure artist and it turns up in a search on the German eBay - if you can see the CD title and artists name in the title; a picture of the CD itself on the listing; see that the seller has good feedback and accepts PayPal, then you stand a pretty good chance of knowing exactly what is being sold and feeling safe buying it without knowing one word of German.

Also, because English is widely used/taught internationally as a second or third language, many people from foreign countries will be able to pick up on the odd word (enough to make some sense of what is being said) without necessarily having the ability to actually write an e-mail in English.

'Qu'en est il de mon colis? jusqu'à ce jour je n'ai encore de nouvelles.'

Do they actually expect all of us to understand this?

LOL, More likely that they hope you understand it. It is frustrating though, especially if they have bought something and there is some kind of a problem, and you can't work out what they are saying in order to sort it out.

Well, good thing I found this great translation tool then

http://www.google.com/language_tools

Thanks. There is Babel Fish too: http://babelfish.altavista.com/

A word of warning though. Whilst these can often give you a clue as to what is being said, don't expect to be able to write a reply in English, translate it using these sites in French (or whatever language) and expect the other person to understand what you are saying. Quite often it comes out as gobbledygook. You don't realise how bad it is until you get a French person (or whoever) send you a translated question in English. :eek: If you have to use them, try not to use any idioms, colloquialisms or complex sentences, as these do not translate well when using such automatic translators. Keep everything short, simple and to the point.

Annando

You must have sold something to this guy on ebay, he is asking you where his parcel is as he has not received any news from you

FloFlo

Annando wrote:

You must have sold something to this guy on ebay, he is asking you where his parcel is as he has not received any news from you

:rotfl: :rotfl:

Mobeer

nightswimmer wrote:

.....
Thanks. There is Babel Fish too: http://babelfish.altavista.com/

A word of warning though. Whilst these can often give you a clue as to what is being said, don't expect to be able to write a reply in English, translate it using these sites in French (or whatever language) and expect the other person to understand what you are saying. Quite often it comes out as gobbledygook. You don't realise how bad it is until you get a French person (or whoever) send you a translated question in English. :eek: If you have to use them, try not to use any idioms, colloquialisms or complex sentences, as these do not translate well when using such automatic translators. Keep everything short, simple and to the point.

I good check to use is to translate your message from English to French, then translate the resulting text back into English. Whenever I've tried this before, the final English text is just about incomprehensible.