I’m writing to a cheesemaker in France. Their product, due to a new wrapper, is not arriving in this country with the same quality as it did when it came in the old-style wrapper. I want to write to the factory to point this out, and I have their address, but I don’t know how they would term “quality control” over there. For that matter, I don’t know if a quality control department is who I would write to - maybe something like “consumer feedback”? “Buyer complaints”?
So does anyone know the proper translation? I know I can run it through Babelfish, but a direct translation of “quality control” may not be the term I’m looking for. Thanks for any help.
The translation (aside from the coding) is good, but are you sure that’s who’d you’d really want to write to? Maybe the address is a canned address and it doesn’t really matter to whom you write, but then again, if you send it to quality control it may actually get to quality control which is the wrong place for it to arrive. You really do want consumer relations or customer care or something along those lines. Here’s why:
Packaging will package the item. Is it their fault? Quality control looks at outgoing quality. Was the product okay when it left the dock? Package design only designs according to why the marketing people tell them, so you can’t write to them, either. Marketing may not know that the quality with the new package is no good, and even so, they may blame quality control or packaging groups, but they’ll just trust their own market research and blow you off. That’s why customer service exists. Aside from talking through your problem on the phone, they actually log all this types of stuff and it’s directed to a company continuing improvement type of organization. It may be a “product quality” department, but that is very distinct from “quality control” which is essentially just a manufactuing process.
Now if this cheese company is some guy with a couple of goats working out of his barn, then there’s the potential for some consolidation among functions there!
Alas, it’s a factory - the company which produces “Le Chatelain”, a deliciously funky, ripe and flavorful Camembert. Or at least it used to be that way. The new inner wrapping is so thick that the poor cheese cannot continue to ripen in the normal manner after it leaves the factory. It arrives in this country bland and insipid, and it’s pointless to buy it. I extrapolate that some American-educated bean counter determined that there was less product loss due to drying out or spoilage, and so the thicker inner wrapper is used. I’m hoping to appeal to their French scorn for corner-cutting at the cost of flavor and quality (I’ll say it now tastes like a characterless American knock-off – that’ll get 'em!).
You’ve convinced me. I’ll use “consumer relations” or “customer care” in the address of my letter. Now, how do you say these phrases correctly in French?