So, every now and again, I get to pull something out of my old bag of tricks that reminds me that I'm actually not a total idiot after all.
In this case, we're talking about my mad skills as a linguist.
So, we got an e mail from a customer needing help - only, he's in France (and presumably French). And he asked if we could call him. Since I'm the department's one Francophone, I got tapped to contact him.
I sent an e mail which I wrote, then checked in Babelfish, and what do you know? I can still write a letter in French!
He replied, and we set a call time for today - 3PM France Time, 8AM Nashville Time.
I got his voicemail, but what's great is, I left the message in French, without creating it beforehand, and totally off the cuff. Now, I am sure that like David Sedaris once wrote, I sounded like an "Evil Hillbilly Baby" - but I did apologize for my bad French, and you have to figure, they're probably not expecting an American company to provide support in French. Spanish, sure - and I have a colleague who does quite nicely.
What made me really happy, though, is that when the automated voice mail came on, I understood everything the operator asked me to do. So, I can write it, I can speak it, and hells yeah, I can understand it. Go, me!
I've said it before - if I ever got to be a Super Hero, I'd want my super power to be that I was omni-lingual.
Of course, actually supporting a French version of IE 7 - that's going to be a challenge.
Bring it!
In this case, we're talking about my mad skills as a linguist.
So, we got an e mail from a customer needing help - only, he's in France (and presumably French). And he asked if we could call him. Since I'm the department's one Francophone, I got tapped to contact him.
I sent an e mail which I wrote, then checked in Babelfish, and what do you know? I can still write a letter in French!
He replied, and we set a call time for today - 3PM France Time, 8AM Nashville Time.
I got his voicemail, but what's great is, I left the message in French, without creating it beforehand, and totally off the cuff. Now, I am sure that like David Sedaris once wrote, I sounded like an "Evil Hillbilly Baby" - but I did apologize for my bad French, and you have to figure, they're probably not expecting an American company to provide support in French. Spanish, sure - and I have a colleague who does quite nicely.
What made me really happy, though, is that when the automated voice mail came on, I understood everything the operator asked me to do. So, I can write it, I can speak it, and hells yeah, I can understand it. Go, me!
I've said it before - if I ever got to be a Super Hero, I'd want my super power to be that I was omni-lingual.
Of course, actually supporting a French version of IE 7 - that's going to be a challenge.
Bring it!
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