Can anyone help me with the French here? I am trying to say, "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance," Harry said. "I am sorry we were not able to meet this summer when I was here." What I have, is this: C'est un plaisir de faire votre connaissance,” Harry said to Anastasie. “Je suis désolé nous n'avons pas rencontré cet été quand j'étais ici." Am I even close?
I think French is actually more succinct for once. Pleasure to meet you is simply "Enchante", that much I remember. PS, isn't succinct way too long a word to mean short?
Je suis enchantée de faire votre connaissance = I'm delighted/pleased to meet you. C'est un plaisir de vous rencontrer = It's a pleasure to meet you. Or you can simply say c'est un plaisir. The shortest and most simple way is Enchanté, it's most frequently used. Enchantée is used if the person being addressed is female.
Thanks, that helps a lot Quinn. Also appreciate your input BCF. I would have gone with yours, except that the greeting was a bit more formal, so I went with Quinns. Thanks again - and I'll probably keep this thread active every few weeks with new questions.
As others have said, there are several ways to express the English phrase "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance" in French. The most common of which is "enchanté" (Note: a minor correction to Quinn's post is required here regarding the gender used. The gender is that of the person SPEAKING, not the one being addressed. Thus "enchantée" would be used if the speaker is female and "enchanté" if the speaker is male. This is because "enchanté" is short for "je suis enchanté de faire votre connaissance" and is an adjective describing the speaker.) Whether your character would use this phrase or the longer full version is somewhat dependent upon their personality and the setting. However, I would note that "enchanté" can be used in much more formal settings than the English equivalent "pleased to meet you" and it would be very rare in French to use the full phrase "je suis enchanté de faire votre connaissance." As to your second phrase, your current translation reads literally as "I am sorry that we did not meet while I was here this summer" which eliminates the concept of being "able to meet" and makes the sentence not read quite as comfortably as the version in English. I might try something like "Je suis désolé nous n'avons pas eu l'occasion de rencontrer cet été quand j'étais ici" which translates approximately as "I am sorry that we did not have a chance to meet while I was here this summer." Again, if you explain the context of the character and setting, I can try and give a translation that fits more closely.
Sorry. I didn't realize I made an error. Yeah, gender is based on who is speaking, not who is being addressed. As Warde said, Enchanté can be used in formal settings and is the most commonly said. French is rarely as short and simple as English and spitting it out in a translator makes things appear awkward.
On second thought, "Je suis désolé de n'avoir pas eu l'occasion de vous rencontrer cet été quand j'étais ici" would be better. It translates as "I am sorry that I did not have the chance to meet you while I was here this summer" which is not exactly what you asked for but works better grammatically in French. My apologies for the error in the former translation, I grew up bilingual but have not been using my French much in the last decade. Something about the original sentence was bothering me but I'm a little rusty so it took a few minutes for me to realize what . Still, I hope this helps!
On second thought, "Je suis désolé de n'avoir pas eu l'occasion de vous rencontrer cet été quand j'étais ici" would be better. It translates as "I am sorry that I did not have the chance to meet you while I was here this summer" which is not exactly what you asked for but works better grammatically in French. My apologies for the error in the former translation, I grew up bilingual but have not been using my French much in the last decade. Something about the original sentence was bothering me but I'm a little rusty so it took a few minutes for me to realize what . Still, I hope this helps!
Dang... why didn't I find this forum before I started this story! Yeah, that helps a lot. I've had a number of French quips and sentences in my story, but since most of it is posted already, it's not really worth going back through it here. I will, however, be coming back for future help!
I'm glad! It's actually really nice to have a chance to use my French and I'm sure others feel the same.
Great! Because I have another one. It is the title of a class. "Understanding Non-human Sentient Beings" Have fun with that one!!
Unfortunately, French does not have a great direct translation for the concept of "sentience." In recent years, some French speakers have adopted the English terms "sentience" and "sentient(e)" as the noun and adjective respectively and my understanding is that this usage is at least somewhat common in French science fiction. The more traditional translation would be "sensible," however, this has the downside of also meaning "sensitive" or "tender" and thus it's interpretation is context dependent. If I were you I'd still go with the traditional translation of "êtres sensibles" for sentient beings. It's a common enough phrase that your audience will know what you mean. For example, animal rights groups in France refer to "les droits des êtres sensibles" (the rights of sentient beings) not "les droits des êtres sentients." As to the full phrase, a direct translation would be "Comprendre Les Êtres Sensibles Non Humain" which would be perfectly grammatically correct in French. That said, it would probably be more common to simply name the course "Les Êtres Sensible Non Humain" (direct translation "Non Human Sentient Beings") and leave the fact that the course is teaching you to understand them to common sense. That would work well so long as the course is about their culture, physiology, behaviour, etc. If the course is about linguistics then you'll either want to go with the first translation I gave ("Comprendre Les Êtres Sensibles Non Humain") or "Les Langues des Êtres Sensibles Non Humain" (literally, "The Languages of Non Human Sentient Beings"). And there I go again, giving you way more info than you probably needed .
Warde . . . that is PERFECT! Thanks. Not only that, but the info you gave me, is exactly the opening lecture I'm going to start with! So thanks, again!
I'm glad it helps! One quick thing, your post prompted me to have a quick reread through what I'd written and I noticed I'd made a small typo. It should be "Non Humains." I missed the "s" the first time I wrote it and then copy and pasted for the rest of the possible translations making edits to the relevant part as I went. As I result, the typo kind of stuck. Sorry about that!
I would translate things a little differently. For this, I would say: "C'est un plaisir de faire votre connaissance.", Harry said to Anastasie. "Je regrette qu'on ne se soit pas rencontrés quand j'étais venu l'été dernier." If, however, Harry and Anastasie were college-age or younger, then I would use tu instead of vous in the first sentence. That would give us, "C'est un plaisir de faire ta connaissance." For the name of the class, I quite like Warde's suggestion of using êtres sensibles non-humains. I think for the name of a course, I would go with Compréhension des êtres sensibles non-humains. I wouldn't capitalize the letters in each word as in English, and I would hyphenate non-humains. I think you could do without, but it looks more natural to me that way. Anyways, that's just my two cents.
Alright, a little more french help please! A girlfriend, waking up her boyfriend in the morning. The day after they got together after six months of angsty separation both real and emotional. "Good morning, my love." I know it's Bonjour, ma but is it amour? I can't remember French grammar for the life of me.
I don't speak French, but aren't you looking for, Bonjour, mon amour? You could also say, Bonjour, mon cheri.
Bonjour, mon amour and Bonjour, (mon) chéri are both correct, though amour is has more of an emotional impact than chéri (which translates to "dear" and might come across as too casual, given this particular context). If you want the girlfriend to sound more like she's in love, go with amour.
yes... 'mon' must be used when the subject word is masculine... 'ma' is the feminine... he would say 'ma cherie' to her... 'amour' still takes 'mon' since it begins with a vowel and does not have a feminine form, such as chèri/chèrie and 'cher/chere'...
Ahh, thanks everyone! And Mamma - it's been a hectic few weeks, so it'll be a while in coming yet before I get something out to ya. Thanks for your help in this!
when in doubt, go here: http://www.wordreference.com/ scrubb... pas de problème!... i'm here for you whenever you get around to it...
Alright, need some more help for French. A French girl is mad at the fates (female) for what's happening, and calls them a really bad name. Here's what I have so far. "Putains, all of them!" Is that correct?
You know, there are forums dedicated to the fine points of language translation. Those are a better place to ask such questions, because you'll pick up more of the idiomatic points, rather than just word for word literal translation (which can be awful). This is especially important for invective.
Ignoring the use of two languages in one sentence (is that intentional/stylistic?) as someone who currently lives in France 'putain' really isn't that bad a name to call someone- it actually tends to be used more as a mild exclamation (along the lines of 'damn,' if admittedly a little bit ruder) than as an actual defamatory word for women. IMO you'd be better off shortening it to 'pute(s)' as that tends to be a more specific insult than just a curse word. That said, as has already been mentioned you'd probably be best asking somewhere else for a better answer. Wordreference forums would be the obvious place to try.
