Do they speak any English?

Jane how awful for you - if I lived near you I'd take great pleasure in showing your friendly locals the error of their ways....so to speak :-)

I once saw a sign for Toast Warm Dogs outside a cafe in the south of France. Obviously lost something in translation.

As you know we are very keen on our Breton up here and Quimper becomes Kemper. They held a recent evening charitable running event and some great "pub" went out![](upload://nD94T56PhABxaHES6i5S2rk4BQ.jpg)

Cor, they charge up for foreign food too! We had 'fish ant chips' up on a local menu summer 2014, none of the Anglo brigade seem to have been able to explain the difference between 'et' and 'fourmi' so it hung around for a month. Eventually a local competitor, good mate of ours, whose English is good told them - just out of sadism I think.

David - pretty much the same down here in the deep South. Don't get me started on the pathetic quality of French beef.....! Still, what you never have you never miss....

Fabulous Brian - and here's on from out local Intermarché cafeteria. I got a Gallic shrug when I pointed out the error!

Good grief yes - a factoid appearing on screen seems to be taken as gospel truth just because it is on a screen. More than gospel truth, even. And sometimes people seem to bend over so far backwards to be open-minded that their brains fall out. Terrifying.

Pseudo right? I have heard so many people say X is right that I suspect for many people the web is now absolute gospel! Even when proof that X is crap is circulating X still does the rounds and gains credibility. Scares me too.

Véronique: and following on from that, I often discuss with my belovéd how much of what is pseudo right because "it is on the web" will shape the history of the future, and more alarmingly, the past.

It scares the bits and pieces out of me.

Well it's the same as anything isn't it? You can pay for a Porsche or an Audi, but you still risk getting the same old rubbish as a VW. However web development does cost some money and I think what is happening here is that SFN is striving for improvement. Coming from Hartlepool, I'm very well placed to say "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

Having a little bit more to pay the developers reduces the risk of getting monkeys (or you get better monkeys), which is what Facebook can do.

It was an observation not a critisism. In my experience there is rarely a strong correlation between the amount of money thrown at software and websites and their ease of use.

There are people like that everywhere unfortunately, that's exactly the sort of vile Daily-Mail-post-article-comment-style stirring-up that some people go in for increasingly all over Europe these days. Now of course it is even easier as social media make it so easy for any ghastly bigot to rant away as much as they like. Grim :-(

Ho Ho ! Not quite the same but the SMIRTOM around here translates aluminium 'barquettes' as small boats - I have been meaning to tell them for some time that it is a little hard to put a small boat in a recycling bag.

Sun's shining - off to do domething more useful !

Here's one for you Simon: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/google-translate-error-as-pontes-spain-clitoris-food-festival-grelo-galicia

One law for the French!

Interesting....the local farmers here in Brittany seem to protest hugely when they see the smallest piece of imported food in France, often taking it out of supermarkets, spoiling it, burning lorries etc. Yet daily hundreds of lorries are taking French food to the UK every day without the slightest problem. The new arrivals in our commune (plenty of Brits but also people from Ireland and other parts of France) have saved the bank balances of many local families and put back economic activity into many a commune, benefitting local commerces but also of course the revenues of the commune. New people don't seem frightened to take on a house restoration in the national park while the locals all want to build new. Equally more than half the children in the village school are from newcomer families and there are now five British children in the school out of 65. In fact if the newcomers hadn't brought ther children with them the school would be hardly viable. I would like to see the FB details if possible Catherine. I know that some local people here support FN and there are even more outspoken Breton groups who go around with black shirts etc. Incredible really. Some of those have had links in the past with terrorist groups in other European countries.

@ Jane - sorry to hear that xx

@ John Brian

James and I quite agree with you ("Facebook does the comments and replies thing so much better.") - however, you will find that they have rather more cash to spend on development than we do.

Can I suggest that if you find a thread confusing, you tag people with an @ symbol - not perfect but it works.

We are working on a site upgrade at the moment. Obviously paying developers doesn't come free so perhaps you'd like to make a donation which we can then earmark for SFN development?

thank you

It's been an interesting post. Thank you to all that have answered. I feel a lot better at trying to get by and I am better prepared. I take all your feedback on board

Thank you everyone