Deepl translates the stand-alone phrase as “to read you” - doesn’t make a lot of sense but it is a literal translation I guess, Google offers the same output in that case.
It only offers “see you soon” when you add a full stop making it a complete phrase - so it is using *some*, but limited, contextual info.
Both Google translate and Deepl are AI driven (not 100%, there is, AFAIK, a lot of standard grammatical analysys as well, backed by AI) so they will get trained on large corpora of text with a corresponding translation, plus they continuously tweak their AI model based on user feedback (the little like/dislike buttons - Google allows a suggested edit as well).
All we can guess is that the corpus that Deepl was trained on included the “A vous lire.” ↔ “see you soon” equivalence and the corpus that Google was trained on didn’t.
Deepl and Google do pretty well translateing between French and English, mostly Deepl “wins” but not always.
It can never be 100%, sometime you need context external to the text itself to make an accurate translation.
when asked to do a translation for our local bulletin (or whatever) I always explain that it will not be word for word. First, I must fully understand the meaning of what is written and then I will put that understanding into proper English…
Our Maire tends to waffle and/or use flowery language… so it can be a challenge.
No complaints, so far…
My French neighbours enjoy taking a peak at the English bits… some do read English and some just want to try… all to the good.
Does irritate me though, when Brits ask me for help/info about so-and-so/whatever… and admit they haven’t even looked at their Bulletin… aaaargh.
Hmmm… I can relate to that! In my case it was the other way round in that some Brits in our conversation group had to tell a French member about the changes to rubbish collection which entailed ordering a new bin from the Mairie. The lady said that she was far too busy to read the once-a-quarter news magazine issued by the Mairie…
I used to translate mission statements and speeches among other things by the likes of Guillaume Pepy and other such luminaries. I am sure they were good at their jobs but oh how dreary translating company-speak. I infinitely prefer industrial/medical/legal translation. Not interested in literary translation.
My record-translation-feat… was actually done for Brit friend, who handed me 12 pages of his speech/waffle and asked me to translate into French “on the spot”…
I’d been invited, but had no idea I would be taking part…
Frankly, I could have done 12 pages of French waffle… to match his English rhubarb… but knew my neighbours would not appreciate this… I’d seen their faces fall when they saw the sheaf of papers in his hands…
and they’d already waited patiently, long enough… while the few Brits listened, then cheered their approval.
So I gave a brief resumé, delivered with a smile… phew… done and dusted… now, where are those refreshments…
Stella, thanks for your offer to call the restaurant. That’s very kind of you. I may take you up on that eventually, but I thought I should give the usual method another try.
So Saturday morning, US time, I requested a reservation on the restaurant’s website. I thought I might hear after their Saturday lunch service was over, but I haven’t. It’s now well after Sunday lunch service and they’re probably prepping for dinner at this point.
If I don’t hear from them I’ll try again tomorrow morning.
As for translation, I prefer Google to DeepL. I compose my email in English, plug it into Google and DeepL, and compare the two. I always have my doubts about each of them! I fiddle with my English text to get Google/DeepL to use vous instead of tu or vice versa, or check the conjugation, etc. I often need to de-translate my first name. I look words up on Wordreference and change them if I think the usage is wrong.
This is why sending off a short email takes me an hour.
Can I just check a phrase please (on a SPANC non-conformity notice). Like a lot of these things, it’s not a proper sentence so in my view is ambiguous. It’s “Travaux dans un délai d’un an si vente”. Does this mean that, if I sell my house, the work will have to be done in a year after sale? The non-conformity isn’t a health risk so I’m hoping that I’ll have until the next inspection to fix it
We’ve no intention of selling! So we have until the next inspection to “fix” what was a more recent addition to the specification? I certainly hope so since it’s a bit of a faff (and I don’t expect to last another 6 years anyway!!!)
As I say… from similar reports I’ve seen… whatever is wrong is not life-threatening etc… just not conforming. In order that every fosse-thing does eventually get inline… the clause about a Buyer/Sale is clearly marked… you don’t have to do the work… but you must tell any Buyer!!!
I translated the entire phrase in google:
Good evening to you, Sorry for the late reply but we weren’t present, took a few days off! To read to you. Looking forward to welcoming you."
I tend to read behind the lines when translating from French to English because I noticed in learning the French language, it’s not always exact. French is a very creative and spiral type of language so it’s more of understanding a common kind of situation and learning different phrases to express yourself rather than the textbook definition, in my belief.
Google picked up as “To read to you” because “lire” means “to read” and “to you” is “tu/vous” - so it made the phrase as such (from sort of the textbook and online definition).
I am from America, so I am not sure on how France operates restaurant businesses, but I do know how South America restaurant businesses tend to operate. If a company was off due to Covid/holiday/etc., and after returning back to work, responds to emails. The emails are suppose to be formally written (usually an automated message comes in after response). Sometimes a casual message may end up being sent due to an old template being utilize or a new hire who prefers to reply casually. It looks like this email is a bit casual to me in the way google translated it. The statement in question “A vous lire” i think is meant to state the fact of addressing your previous message, which they didn’t add in the beginning. The message went straight to apologies rather than maybe starting off with “In regards to your previous message” or “To bring to your attention” , or even “We have read your previous message”; we apologize; we were off; a pleasure; etc. I mean there is ways you could rephrase this in many ways, but bottom “gist” that’s what I get from it. I would think companies don’t differ that much in such circumstances.
so it can be a challenge.
