I’m attempting to correspond with a French person using only the meager skills I recall from the 8th grade and Babelfish. Not a bright idea However, it has not gone too bad, except this person keeps using the phrase “mes arrière-petites filles,” which Babelfish says means “my back-small daughters.” What?? What is this person really trying to say? I’m afraid to try to ask myself because I have no idea how Babelfish would mangle the question or response, thus broadening the communication gap.
Thanks
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Also, who is Saint Alcie? Does anyone know? Here is our correspondence thus far (I’ll let you translate yourself, smarties):
Maurice:
Pourriez-vous m’indiquer quand se fête la Sainte-Alcie ?
Ce prénom est celui de mon arrière petite fille mais ne figure sur aucun
calendrier !
Quelle est son origine ?
Gr8Kat:
Je ne parle pas français. J’utilise les Babel Fish d’AltaVista, ainsi ce ne sera pas probablement compréhensible.
Peut-être vous pouvez contacter le peuple qui mettent à jour cette page pour plus d’information?
Bonne chance!
Maurice:
Ou puis-je trouver Babel Fish d’AltaVista Est-il possible d’être traduit en
anglais ?
Merci pour l’intérêt porté à ma demande … Je continue mes recherches au
sujet d’Alcie
(C’est le prénom donné à l’une de mes arrière-petites filles)
Gr8Kat:
Babelfish peut traduire français-anglais et anglais-français. Mais les traductions ne sont pas très précises. J’espère que ce message est compréhensible. Le URL est: http://babelfish.altavista.com/
Je suis désolé que je ne pourrais pas vous aider avec votre question au sujet d’Alcie. Mais il vous a été parler gentil.
Bonne chance
So, if you can answer either his question about Saint Alcie, or mine about “back-small daughters,” I’d appreciate it
TTFN
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
your correspondent is talking about his great-granddaughter. “petite fille” is granddaughter; “arriere petite fille” is great-granddaughter.
this is probably one of the weaknesses of a computer translation program - if you punch in the words individually, you may not get the meaning of a compound word.
as for “Alcie”, I’m not sure - will poke around a bit. but, we’ve got a couple of francophones on this board - can omniscientnot tell us the answer?
Having just spoken to a real Frenchie on this matter, she is of the opinion that Alcie is definately a person (this chap’s great-granddaughter) but it isn’t a name she has ever heard of.
To be honest, I have no idea why he’s even asking me.
OK, to be slightly more honest, I have a vague idea why he’s asking me: My grandmother’s name was Gladys Alcie Evelyn Mullins. I envision Monsieur was doing a web search for “Alcie,” found my genealogy page where I give my grandmother’s full name, couldn’t read English so he didn’t know what I was talking about, and decided to ask if I knew anything about the name or the saint. And I don’t. Quel dommage!
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
However, it has not gone too bad, except this person keeps using the phrase “mes arrière-petites filles,” which Babelfish says means “my back-small daughters.” What?? What is this person really trying to say? I’m afraid to try to ask myself because I have no idea how Babelfish would mangle the question or response, thus broadening the communication gap.