V.e.r.y L.o.n.g Profiles

I used to feel like that, but just recently I’ve changed my approach and my responses. Life for me, here, is almost unbelievably stressful every day from the instant I wake up until I gratefully go to bed again. People who have never been a carer to another adult would never understand this. Therefore, when I get a new person to send a card to, I choose an appropriate card and write about it. Sometimes I could write an entire novel about the card which I’m writing on. This new approach had yielded wonderfully satisfying thankyou messages. One woman wrote back 'thank you for making me think"!
Sorry if this is rambling on.

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Keep calm :smiley: RU-3436201

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Reading all these responses has only emboldened me to add more details to my profile. Concision be damned; I’m going for verbosity gold! :medal_sports:

The main reason I have tried to make my profile relatively short (operative word: “relatively”) is that I do not want to overwhelm Postcrossers whose English is not advanced. But I suppose I could add more details about myself, as long as I write them clearly? What are everyone’s thoughts on this?

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I think that sounds like a good idea. I kinda like my current profile style; first shortly about the card preferences, and then listing of the facts and at the end direct swap info for those who are looking for one. It could be better though, maybe tidier to make it easier to understand.

I think if you make the sentences short, use easier language (“I am…”, “I like…”, “I have…”) and avoid the big words and connecting sentences with “but”, “and”, “therefore” and so on. People often first learn to tell about themselves, so the short sentences making presentation are usually easy to understand and can be quite easily translated with google if needed. I have noticed that adjectives (aka. how something is like) are often the last thing people start to learn so avoiding complicate adjectives and synonyms for describing yourself when you speak with beginners is a good idea.

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I have always assumed most people know how to use google translate, or their browsers would automatically translate for them like facebook does.

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Google translate/browser translation has varying degrees of success, depending on the language. As @Kompis-Ninna has said, simpler sentences do better.

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I have thought of that too but I cannot help making some sentences a bit elaborate. I think the main information (in my profile) should be clear enough and the rest can be skipped. I know how frustrated I get with languages I know enough to interact but still requiring a lot of effort :grimacing:

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Agreed! I never heard about Inge Look or Eurovision till Postcrossing.

I like it too when people’s profiles ask specific questions or for a quote, for example.

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Another great way to see how well your stuff translates is to stick it into Google, select a random language, for example, Japanese, and then translate it back into English. You will see some of the loss in translation this way.

For example ‘Verily, I know not what you mean’ into JP and then JP into ENG = ‘Sure, I’m sure you don’t know what you mean.’

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That reminded me of a famous Portuguese-English phrasebook written by a Portuguese man who probably did not speak English. He likely used a French-English dictionary in combination with a Portuguese-French dictionary to write it, and the results are hilarious.

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Wheeze I need these on a tshirt. Thank you for sharing this.
I think you might be amused by Japanese Engrish.
Years ago, meeting a friend at a stationery shop on the weekend she had a shirt in very large bold print saying ‘diarrhea’. She had no clue.

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Poor woman; I would feel awful! :sweat_smile: I hope you had a good laugh about it, though!

I do that when I end up sending a postcard in their native language because I can tell they don’t know English well…or they state it on their profile. It is fun to keep rewriting the message until it doesn’t change anymore

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Or by franponais:rofl:

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I request an example :eyes:

Well, apart from the language mistakes, there are the sentences that look like they came from Google Translate and you don’t know what they are supposed to mean. For example, the first sentence in the photo above (“A sensation be first happy today” ?!) :


On the one below : “Je suis dans les hauts alcools seulement se languir” (“I am in the high alcohols only languish”). I can’t recognize a Japanese syntax behind either.
image
And then you have the unvoluntarily salacious expressions… :sweat_smile:
But that false French, including the simple mistakes, is funny essentially because of the context. They aren’t mistakes in a student’s paper, they are used on signs, on products that are meant to be sold, and so on. Sometimes it is kind of cute :

(Cocorico is the onomatopoeia for the rooster’s crow.)
And sometimes it is just puzzling :

(A café called “The angel’s pee”… An allusion to Brussels ?)

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Omg these were amazing :joy:

There’s a famous Japanese movie that reminds me of this unintentional meaning.
It’s ‘Laputa Castle in the Sky’
After many Spanish people told them what it meant they changed the Western release to just ‘Castle in the Sky’ haha

Thanks for sharing

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I feel like I’ll be using “Je suis dans les hauts alcools” from now on :joy:

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I… I… have to ask. Was it a brown shirt? (I’m sorry.)

Also, do you know how hard it is for me to remember how to spell diarrhea? Diarrhoea? The fact that the shirt got it right needs a kudos.

Here’s a page out of the book “Anguished English”. I can’t read this book without crying of laughter. The bottom two are related to this off-topic topic (I censored it but I think you can guess what it says.)

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“Happy PXing dude” :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I just laughed so hard!

I agree, I don’t mind a longer profile. I like to have an idea of what kind of postcard to send someone. I can’t always fill that wish but I can sure try. If I come across a one sentence profile I tend to just send a simple card with my town’s name on it. I like to save my fancier cards for postcrossers with specific wishes. Although, it is slightly frustrating when I come across a profile that has a long list of “what not to send” (although I understand asking not to send nude or erotic cards) or asking to make sure you avoid duplicates. To me, each postcard is unique since it is written by a different person. It also might have different stamps and postal marks. If I were to receive a duplicate, I would still find a cool use for it.

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