Potential Language barrier... any suggestions for best course of action?

[boneshakerscards]

About a week ago I had a potential customer send me a couple of messages about some items he was interested in. The only problem was they were completely in French, and it has been 15+ years since I took it in school and even then was not very good with it. I can pick up bits and pieces of it, but can't speak or worse read it fluently.

I did my best to answer his questions (that I think he was asking) and letting him know that I can't speak fluent french. After a couple days, he comes back buys and item and pays for it, but then leaves feedback bang right away and sends me another message about the purchase. Again it's it french and I can't understand what he is saying or asking.

I'm only curious as to what i should do or the best course of action to take to make my customer happy even though I can't understand him as I do realize in Canada this is a bilingual country of both French and English. Yet I'm willing to bet others may have run into this problem as well. Specially immigrants to this country that may have grown up somewhere else (Spain, Germany, Japan, etc..) who make speak 2 languages in English and another one but French is not one of them. Yet, when your customer insists on only communicating with you in a language you don't read/write it makes it hard and I'm worrying about not providing him with the best service I can.

Anyone have any suggestions? And has this ever happen to others that might also benefit from from any advice people could give.

Thank you!

[dipmicro]

I routinely speak Italian and French with my customers 🙂 I don't know a single word of those languages, but when I run it through Google Translator, it usually makes sense and then I write response in English and run it through translator with little disclaimer at the end that I don't speak the language and the message was translated. Some switch to English, others are satified with this.

[coxengines]

Learn French fer' cryin' out loud 🙂

Yeah, we get that every now and then, especially from the French. Noting that we speak French on our listings probably helps this along 🙂

Bernie

[canadabeltbuckles]

There are tons of online translation options, and yes, for free... Diane and I speak fluent French, so it is not a problem, but for some unilingual people, the online transaltion service is ok. Unfortunately, they translate your message 'literally', but the recipient should still be able to figure out what you are trying to say...

Good luck with that...

[dipmicro]

... but for some unilingual people ...

I have to object. There is many of us who did not graduate in Canada, can speak several languages, just not the right ones (except English of course) 🙂

[recped]

The online translators don't always deal with eBay speak so well. Don't ever use them to translate a message you are SENDING to a buyer. You will have no certainty it conveys the correct message.

Your best bet is to post it here or on another one of the eBay boards (cleansed of personal info).

My own French is very limited but it's enough to decipher most emails of this type if they are not too lengthy. An accurate verbatim translation is beyond my pitiful skill level but there must be someone here who can.

[dipmicro]

Don't ever use them to translate a message you are SENDING to a buyer.

Why???

The questions are simple - what is the shipping, what's the total, etc. C'mon it's not like we are translating Hamlet here.

[recped]

Do you ask buyers questions?

Normally you would be giving them instructions you want them to follow without any misinterpretation.

[purse_of_the_legionary]

When I have a buyer who doesn't speak french or english, whatever the language, I use BABELFISH (I added a link to http://babelfish.altavista.com in my Mozilla Firefox toolbar). Before to send the translated message, I verify it the best I can (italian, spanish or portugese are similar to french, so I can see if it makes sense and usually change some words to better fit).

For other languages, I ALWAYS add this message (translated) in capital letters at the beginning of my message : THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE HAS BEEN TRANSLATED USING A SOFTWARE. It's not perfect of course, but it's better than not be able to communicate with your buyer. Language has never been a problem on eBay, from my point of view.

The only real problem is when your buyer purchases an item without understanding the terms. Again, a short translated message can do the job. Being able to ask the buyer to modify his feedback is helping a lot for buyers who did not understand terms of sale or even item description.

[dipmicro]

I ALWAYS add this message (translated) in capital letters ...

Yes, I do something similar. Recped, perhaps you deal with gen-pop, but my buyers are usually well educated folks. A weird one pops up here and there just like with everything.

If I was peddling cell-phones, XBOXes or paintball guns, I'd be probably more careful.

[boneshakerscards]

Thanks for the tips guys... I'll have to try one of those translators to see if I can understand it. I'm just worried about missing something as he paid for the items, then sent another payment after wards for something else along with a french language message so it's hard to know what he's after! Thanks again all, and hopefully it all works out (crosses fingers)

[coxengines]

If you can,'t sort it out, paste is here and I'll translate it for you.

Bernie

[canadabeltbuckles]

Excellent suggestion Bernie...

Maybe folks out there who speak Italian, or some other language, other than English or French, may want to make the same offer...

[coxengines]

I'm a "Kraut" so German in fine too 🙂

Bernie