Draft for a restaurant card, please criticize.

[becala]

Hi guys,

The lovely schmooo has offered to ask her native French-speaking acquaintances/coworkers to translate a few sentences for me for a restaurant card. I'm leaving for France next week Wednesday, so I should really get going on this.

I want to keep this simple so that it's not confusing, but specific to avoid confusion. How does this sound:

I

Comments

[becala]

Rad, thanks. My vocabulary and grammar never progressed much past what I learned at age 10 and then in 2 years of school french, so I don't know colloquialisms and I'm not even really good at speaking in anything other than present tense.

[becala]

Actually, that wasn't superfluous at all. The people that were going to help me don't actually know me, are just friends of friends. Because of that, I wanted to spread the work around so that no one person was being asked to do a lot.

So I sent just the card translation to schmoooo, and of course didn't hear back yet because she is busy and so are her coworkers. Fortunately my friend who's stationed over in Italy has a friend as well, and he was able to corner the guy and get the card translated.

If you're interested to see how that turned out, I've updated this post with the translation for the card.

I think I might just use the corrections/criticism that you gave me for my personal phrasebook. Even if they turn out to be somewhat awkward, they are better than what I came up with on my own, and will be understood, assuming that my pronunciation isn't too terrible.

In short, thanks for taking the time to do that, and it was VERY helpful. :)

[courting_chaos]

luckily, you will probably run into a lot of unprocessed food with little preservatives.

that being said, I think the idea is cute.
in that "hey I could die, teehe" sort of way.

:-P

[becala]

It's true, I will. However even in America after lengthy discussions about what NOT to put on my meals, I am often served dishes covered in breadcrumbs, or with a cream sauce all over the top, and have to send the plate back. Further, I have had more than one cook/server just pull off the items I was allergic to and hand the plate back to me, as if that would help once the food had come into contact with an allergen.

So I have to assume that servers in France will be exactly as forgetful, and exactly as cavalier about a potentially life-threatening situation. I can get up and walk out without explanation, but I'd rather tell them in their own language that they are douchebags before I do it. :) Plus I'm always looking for an excuse to practice my very poor French.

haha

[courting_chaos]

heck yes. how do you say "you're chef is a pompous ass" in french?

have fun and tell them you want the bread crumbs on the side. then locate some birds.

[liquidsatan]

I'll try pass this on to one of our french immersion teachers to double-check if you want. My french is too rusty to even attempt assistance. The immersion teachers should know the super-proper way to phrase everything. As for 'ketchup,' they call it just ketchup, pronounced more like 'katchup,' but that's totally franglais.