French Cheques

Hi, can someone help me. I used to have a link for a great translation site to help me to write cheques, but cannot find it anymore and cannot really find anything as good searching on line.
Can someone recommend a great translator from figures to letters (that does Euros and cents…) ?
Many thanks !

I would have to do a Google search, but I am sure you could do that as well as I can.
But if you are intending to spend any length of time here, I can thoroughly recommend the wonderful Robert & Collins bilingual dictionary. That has the information you need along with lots of other useful things in helpful sections at the back of the book.

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It isn’t that difficult to learn the vocab to cover numbers and if you don’t want to do that use a bank/credit card when you go shopping.

I know that they are hanging on in France but cheques will go the way of the Dodo before too long.

@Annej2003 The original site you refer to I think was http://www.euro-cheque.com/EC-fr.htm but that no longer exists. It was from 2012. That’s a shame as it was a really great interactive resource.
The best one we have found to replace it is: here.

Not until banks stop charging for holding a debit card, I think. But there is no logic in it. It must cost them more to process paper cheques.

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Just so. And it costs business even more to bank cash. No doubt that there is some reason - protectionism? - against cash-back [or is this done now in FR?] but it makes so much sense for a business like a supermarket to unload cash back to the customer, against a card payment, rather than pay to bank it.

In my small boatyard biz I did everything I could think of to avoid the pound-of-flesh charges by those bandits at RBS for banking cash and cheques. I even set up an honesty system in the chandlery shed whereby yotties noted on their index card that they had taken 2 packets of 35mm x 6 self tappers or w.h.y.

I found a note on one chap’s card, “It’s so nice to be treated as a grown-up”.

Big businesses such as Carrefour, SuperU and E.LeClerk employ their banks, not the other way round. Surely the Finance Directors of these companies could lean on the banks and anyone else getting tin the way, to indroduce cash-back? It would save them loads-a-money

If you type the words into deepl.com don’t you get the translation you need?

In france the numbers in the box on a cheque are always taken as the priority, so the other option is to hand your cheque book to whoever you wish to write a cheque to and get them to fill in the words. As long as you check that the numbers are right you’ll be fine.

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As far as I can see, yes - and the figures are the same (except remember comma separates cents from euros, not a decimal point, which is quite important i.e. 127.45€ is 127,45€)

But it’s, what? 231 words to learn for 1-999999.

Even I can manage that and I doubt anyone here is going to write a cheque for more than 999999 euro :slight_smile:

1-19
un(e), deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix, onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize, dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf.

20-59 = tens word(below) + 1-9 word if needed (with “et” if it’s “1”)
vingt, trente, quarante, cinquante.

60-792
soixante + 1-19 word

80-993
quatre-vingt + 1-19 word

100 = cent (200 = deux cent etc)
1000 = mille (2000 = deux mille etc)

Construction is basically as English, eg “one hundred and twenty-seven thousand, four hundred and thirty one euro” is:

cent vingt sept mille, quatre cent trente et un euro (hope that I got that right, embarassing otherwise).

1] I’m not counting eg dix-sept as a “new word”, nor quatre-vingt - even if you do it’s only 27 words.
2] Yes it gets a bit wierd here, try Canada or Switzerland
3] Yes, this bit is now really weird, c’est la vie.

I still find 70-99 a challenge when speaking but it is copable-with when writing. Apparently (I think Véro posted this) it is the vestage of an older 20-based system which has now all but disappeared except this last echo.

Sorry, grandmothers, eggs and all that :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Thank you Graham,
However that does not do quite what the other box did!
C’est la vie…

It’s when paying a workman etc that you need to use a cheque sometimes.
CC no good there!

True enough, I suppose. Large wads of 50€ notes is probably acceptable though :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

[but not legal above - what is it? 1000€]

Limits here

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So I was sort-of right, I didn’t know non-residents could pay up to 15,000€ though.

Not that I plan on trying.

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In the days when I had a small holiday business, many bookings resulted in two cheques, one for the deposit and another for the booking. I had a loan from Barclays, so was trapped with their business a/c.
I decided they were making enough out of me in interest charges, without the charge for processing cheques. So I opened a Giro a/c and transferred the money in bulk a couple of times a year.
I later learned that they had deliberately destroyed a lot of small businesses.

I doubt this is the only one - random find courtesy of Google

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When we first moved over in 2000 and I was less confident with my french I would just hand workman the cheque book! They used to find it hilarious :smiley:. If you check that the numbers in the box are right then they can’t add anything on.

A pal of mine, Head Boy Rugby School, Cambridge, studying for The Bar, very straight, was my partner in a small biz. I wrote a cheque to buy him out. We went to the bank…

“I can’t present this”! he spluttered. “Yes, you can. And I’m not writing another…”

I had written “Two thousand pounds. Not a penny more. Not a penny less”. It was accepted.

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I vaguely remember that, back-along, Private Eye paid one of their libel ‘fines’ with a cheque written on the side of a live cow.

It was filmed for TV, of course. All was hilarity when the clerk had to come out from behind the counter and frank the cheque with the ‘bonk!’ of a rubber stamp on the rump of the cow.

If you are stuck, you can type in the number in google translate and then convert to French. I have a cousin called Anne Johnstone.

I favour the solution provided by @anon88169868 in post 15 above. Much simpler :wink: