Guten Morgen

We coming up on that time o' year.  The IFA Berlin tech trade show is nearing, which means lots of press releases and information about all the press conferences.

I went through the current list today, and sent off my RSVPs.  A little while later, I received a couple of replies.  One was from Electrolux and sent a very nice thanks.  The other said --


Vielen Dank für Ihre Nachricht. Ich bin vom 02.08.-17.08.2014 nicht in der Agentur zu erreichen und werde Ihre E-Mail nach meiner Rückkehr bearbeiten. In dringenden Fällen können Sie sich an meine Kollegen oder unseren Empfang ([email protected], 089 / 72 01 87-0) wenden.


Viele Grüße,
Julia Meinel

LoeschHundLiepold Kommunikation GmbH,
Tegernseer Platz 7 / Eingang Deisenhofener Str. 1
D - 81541 München


Well, sure.  

As I've noted in the past, one of the whimsical realities of IFA Berlin -- an international tech trade show -- is the battle within the parent company (and also within participating companies) whether to reach out the world press or keep things focused on Germany.  What I laughed about this particular email is that I not only didn't know what it said, I had no idea what company it was for.

Aha, but that's why God created translation websites.  And thanks to that, the end might be near.  I copy-pasted the full note into the translation site, and it turns out to be a perfectly acceptable note to get in German --

"Thank you for your message. I am not reachable from 02.08.-17.08.2014 at the agency and will process your e-mail after my return. In urgent cases, you can contact my colleagues or our reception ([email protected], 089/72 01 87-0) contact."

Clearly, this is just the normal auto-response that Freulein Meinel has with her email.  Mind you, given that they have a major international press event coming in three weeks, it might have also made sense to change the message in advance for the world press, though it's certainly not unreasonable to leave things as they are on a personal account,  

What most impressed me about all this, though, and in many ways a reason for mentioning all this -- is that the translation site did such a truly impressive job translating.  I didn't clean up the syntax of the linguistic result even one word.  That's exactly how it came through.  Zer gut!!