what's this about the senior vice president?

[ironymaiden]

i'm spending some time today reading through customer feedback. i decided to see if the French pages are reporting any different issues than the English-language ones.

kind of fun, in that even with my rusty skills i can follow perfectly well since i know the context. but i kept seeing "svp" in the posts and racking my brain for what that could be. i didn't recognize it as part of our product terminology. i haven't kept up on slang vocabulary. i was rolling through what it would sound like aloud, thinking that it might be like "K-7". (when i was studying seriously, CDs were still relatively unusual. music came on cassette tapes. say K and 7 aloud with the French pronunciation and you get something very close to "cassette". it wasn't the "official" word but it was on all the music store signage. i love this kind of adaptation.)

finally i ran Google Translate to see if it caught it for me.

"svp merci" is "please and thank you".

svp = s'il vous plait, the version of "please" you would use with someone you don't know. d'oh.

Comments

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

I love that! Thank you thank you!

[varina8.livejournal.com]

I guessed right! You made my entire night. Now I can go to bed feeling very continental and accomplished (at least until I catch up with my Parisian friend next month).