Salut, I have come up with a partial solution to the problem of the English only form.
At the end of the day (I checked this morning), the form for French people will be only in English. Which is embarrassing when thousands French Web visitors don't speak English and will not fill an English form. And they will not learn English for visiting Australia 2 weeks in their life too.
Vraiment? I must be unusual...before I visited any european country, even for just a few days of my holiday (French, Italian or German speaking countries), I spent weeks (even sometimes months)
learning basics of the following:
How to ask for directions when lost (the answers can be the problems to understand!!)
How to order food, the names of major food items in that language
How to order ice cream in the flavours you like
How to find accommodation and ask about transport.
I always found after this, that the experience I had in the countries was much nicer, and I was less anxious about possibly being looked upon as stupid, or not being able to eat!
And I didn't have to spend any money to do this - I used tape cassette programs from the library, along with the books that come with them, and I can say for sure that they work quite well. I spent 3 months using the German one (for just a 5 day stay in Germany!) and it was really valuable because where we stayed, nobody spoke English, and they remarked that they didn't know where I was from, because I had no accent!
I only wish this was the case of my French after over 10 years, but helas, I know I still have an Australian accent when I speak French.
Back to the problem that French speakers will not fill in an English form....
solution:
We post the original French translated form online somewhere. ..this site or yours maybe.
We get each French person who wants to visit melbourne and use this service to print it out, then log on to the
www.thatsmelbourne.com.au website and to get on the screen the English version of the same form.
Then, we ask the French person to fill in their copy of the French form.
They look at the 2 forms, and fill in the same marks/ticks on the spaces, because they can read the French one to know what items they should tick on the English one, because they are all in the same order.
At the bottom of the French form we will have made some extra text, which we will ask the French person to 'cut and paste' onto the bottom of the English form before they email it to Federation Square Tourist Info services.
This pasted text from the 'new' French brochures could say something like "I don't speak English. I filled in this form from a French translation.
I would like the meeting point for the tour to be at the Information desk at Federation Square Info Centre. Please tell me very simply what date and time has been accepted and I will be there".
And they would send this off, having written their form without having to know English, and I'm sure when the dates come back to them, even those with limited French could understand what date it is, or for just a few words they could use a dictionary.
And on the other side, the people at the Tourism office receive what looks like to them, an English written form, which they can understand, without having to ask a French guide or translator.
What do you think?
If I had to do this in German, even with the small amount I have, I think I could do it. When my French was not so good at all and I was in Paris, I still managed to use an automatic train ticket machine (even if it did take me 20 minutes, using logic and guessing) so I guess it's a bit like that.
Post-scriptum 2 : More 70 millions visitors in France late 2002.
Gee! So many. In Victoria, Ballarat's Sovereign Hill would have to be the No 1 visited man made tourist attraction, but its yearly figures are still some way under the 1 million people mark!
Solution 2 : We should officially (and really) twin Paris and Melbourne, Nice and Sydney, Nantes and Perth.............
Hmm, I think if 'twinning' were to be done, Sydney and Paris would be the ones to link, not Melbourne (as Sydney is sometimes called 'The Paris of Australia'.
It's a great idea, but Ballarat has its own twin city...and I'm sure almost nobody remembers which Japanese city it is, except once a year or something when some delegates from there visit and there is some publicity. (And there is the sign somewhere on entering the city, but nobody reads it, I'm sure)
Solution 3 : Should be more Australians on this website.
Does anybody know an approximate number of how many Oz born Australians there are on this site?
I find it impossible to tell from the member list.
It doesn't matter, of course, but I'd just be interested to know the other side of the coin: how many other Aussies are such fans of France comme moi!
And how do we encourage more Australians? (Besides me telling all my Alliance Francaise contacts).
I guess some are shy to write in French because they think their French is bad and people might laugh (well, I don't let that stop me! but at first it was hard....)
And the abbreviations in some of the posts make reading them very difficult (Sand has said something about doing an 'abbreviations explained' page for the site some time)
And like me, I think a lot of people probably can't write in French all the time - it takes so much concentration and so much time...but if they write in English, many people might not understand them at all, and if in the 2 languages mixed a little, even I'm finding with some surprise that some people still can't understand me...but if I wait till I can write only in French for making more postings online.....there will be no more posts from me for a very long time
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