Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
The Shortlist
Finding the right Provençale estate agent seemed entirely straightforward, until I began
searching. Once again I floundered horribly. This was primarily because of language dif-
ficulties, both written and spoken. I quickly discovered that my French, school-taught and
then practised on holidays, did not prepare me for translating estate agent specifications, jar-
gon and certainly not understanding local dialects.
I was using on-line free translation services. This was very useful but one needs to be
careful. I found it safest to translate English to French then copy that and translate it back
again into English. This safety check was lengthy, but avoided a number of mistakes slip-
ping through. So, with the aid of my laborious cutting and pasting, one paragraph at a time,
onto
Google Translate
et al, I ended up with a set of 'possibles' ready for further weeding
out. I did all this whilst still busy at work, so things took a lot longer than anticipated.
I finally ended up with a short(ish) list. But reducing it further meant I now needed to
talk
to someone. This was a scary proposition, especially since my early French email forays
had generally ended in some degree of confusion. I put the dreaded day off for as long as
possible, but I knew it had to come. At first I tried to kid myself that all professional people
in France would speak English.
This was, of course, completely incorrect. But, as an English speaker, there is that
chauvinistic tendency to believe it to be so. After all, English is the third most commonly
spoken language in the world, with French back in eighteenth place, so why not? It eventu-
ally dawned on me that, with the tables turned, not many of our average English rural estate
agents would speak fluent French, so it might have been an ambitious aspiration.
The other obstacle was the time difference as the French are one hour ahead of us.
This, as silly as it sounds, makes a big difference, especially when trying to handle com-
plicated phone conversations during noisy lunch breaks. Another tedious revelation was that
many businesses in France close down completely between noon and 2:00pm in order to pay
homage to the revered ritual of eating and drinking. This is a practice Jack has always found
preposterous, but then he had spent his career existing on little other than fumes, entirely
unaware that normal people do need to eat properly from time to time.
