Europe trip is fast approaching and i thought it wise to put some relevant phrases in writing for the French portion of my trip> in Italy i will be fine but i cant speak a word of French so needed a little help. The online translators are pant from what i can tell. So if anyone can translate the following i would appreciate it tonnes!

I have a flat tyre!
My bike wont go!
Do you know a garage that could help me?
Im out of petrol!
Do you know where I can get petrol?
Is there a camp site close by?
Can I camp here just for 1 night please?
Do you have a room for one person for one night please?
How much?
Do you have secure parking or a garage for my bike?
Bottled water?
Drinking water?
Where can I get food close by?
Is there a toilet close buy?
Where are the toilets?
I need medical help!
Is there a hospital close by?
Call an ambulance for me!
Ive crashed my bike!
Here are my medical details.
Im lost. Which way to �........?


Cheers for any help guys and gals!
Dan

Try Babel Fish.

Always close enough for me.

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Ride hard, Fall Softly. [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

Will give it a go. Cheers

Translating useful phrases is OK - but will you understand the reply?

Phrase books only work if both parties are prepared to conduct a conversation while both reading from the same phrase book !!! :-)

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http://www.freewebs.com/my2wheels/

This.

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I spent a lot of money on travel and racing motorcycles - the rest I just squandered.

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Other bikes >> MT-03 / CG125BR-J / ER-6F
Departed >> ZXR400L3 / EC300 / DR-Z400E / DR800S / GPZ500S / GS400

Dorling Kindersley do a compact phrasebook for 14 languages, including pronunciation, which in my experience is the biggest problem to communication (remembering how the guy at the bar fell off his stool laughing at TenereDoug asking for a table in Portuguese)

ISBN - 0-7513-2144-3

Cost about �6, and can easily fit in your pocket, a little bigger round the edges and twice the thickness of an iPhone

Mine has seen service all over the place and it's quite useful as both parties can see the text.

If you start any conversation with 'hello' (in native tounge) this usually leads to the rest of the chat being in english!

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>-------<

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

If you've got an iPhone... there's an app for that (�0.69 called teletext see link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frenc...378079493?mt=8 ) which even speaks the phrase to the unsuspecting frenchman or frenchlady, because believe you me, you might have all the phrase books in the world, but if you read it with a broken accent chances are, they won't understand a bleeping word of it!

Maybe try this, it works for me.

Learn how to say ' I'm sorry, I don't speak French' in French first, plus thankyou and excuse me.

I found that a lot of answers come back in English and at least You've made the first approach and the person will appreciate that.

Then learn single words - hospital - where - bank - garage etc as back up in case they do not speak Englsih. This coupled with a few hand gestures might get you through.

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Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard, grow big an wear glasses if you need em.

Have you ever been to France?

1) the majority of them hate anything English
2) they will not make an effort to speak whatever little English they have but rather expect you to "parlez francaise".
3) They have dodgy toilets where you have to do your No.2's standing up
4) and...(I'll probably get banned for saying this) they're French!

Well spending holidays in France at least twice a year for the last 10 years I'd have to disagree with at least some of what you are saying.

1) True, but you deserve that
2) This has changed a lot in recent years. In fact most of the people I've met actually (attempted to) speak English to anyone they suspected of being a foreigner. Even if their English is totally and utterly unintelligible and your French is near-perfect.
3) Can't argue with this one
4) Unfortunately that hasn't changed yet

But to get back on topic: the phrases are really of little use if you don't know how to correctly pronounce them. They'll even have a harder time to understand what you are saying because they can't make out whether you are speaking English or French
And as been said above, if you don't understand any French answers you may be given, what's the point?

Besides, the most important words are nearly the same in French and English anyway. They'll understand well enough when you say police, hospital, garage, doctor, ...