Be Careful Of What You Say...
Nicole Frank is one of the leading experts of the home exchange community. Nicole has been an avid home exchanger since childhood and has completed dozens exchanges around the world with her family. Nicole’s "Key to Home Exchange" appears weekly on RoofSwap.com with do’s and don’t regarding house swapping and tips and advice on a wide array of travel topics. Have a question for Nicole or want to share some insight of your own? Visit our Member Forum section and post your comments and questions.
Exciting swap offers from far-off lands have been landing in my email inbox lately. April is the perfect time to set up a late-summer swap to or from Europe. Summertime is prime travel season for Europeans and roofswappers have the solution to uneven currency exchange rates: with home swap we don't have to worry about the highest vacation travel costs: restaurant meals and hotel lodging. Roofswappers also turn to international travel within the Americas to take advantage of favorable exchange rates between the US and Canada or those countries and Latin America. There's just one obstacle to setting up those exotic home swaps: we don't all speak the same language.
Communication is the key to successful home exchange, but limiting ourselves to swaps with those who speak our native tongue cuts us off from most of the wide world. On the other hand, it can be scary to offer our house keys to a family which may not understand that the garbage needs to be left out on the curb and the daily newspaper taken in, not vice versa. RoofSwap.com members now have the solution to this problem at their fingertips.
Just how big of a problem can it be not to speak your swap partners' language? Here are some actual offers I received from home exchangers, with only identifying details changed. These swap homes are beautiful, and the idea of traveling to the locales where the families live was tempting -- until I tried to imagine making myself understood to the writers of the emails:
"New York is a city which my wife and I let us like. We wish to make it discover to our children the next summer.
By hoping that XXX is a destination which could be convenient for you."
I got the gist of what these swappers were saying, but it was clear to me that the potential for miscommunication was high, should I try to arrange a vacation exchange with this family.
Another family (I'm assuming) that contacted me had clearly run their French-language email through an on-line computer translation, with unfortunate results. Again, this is an unedited swap offer from an actual family:
" We are tres interhooks by your house travel has four and propose our house it echange.
Besides the comfort of places his(her,its) cituation geographique allows to visit comfortably France. We chose Valencia as these advantages.
It is tres easy to cross(spend) a weekend has Paris (2 hours of route) or Cannes;
It meme time(weather) we are in the heart of a tourist region tres and apprecie / Drome provencale / Ardeche / Luberon.
COULD YOU ANSWER US YES OR NOT RADIDEMENT?
Thank you in advance and has tres bientot"
It is frustrating to get an attractive offer you want to accept only to find that communication is the barrier to a swap with willing partners. Thanks to RoofSwap's newest feature, members of the site now have an exclusive solution to language barriers. Available here http://www.roofswap.com/index.php/page/show/language-line Roofswap's Language Line offers 24/7 access to live translation of over 170 languages. This service is available for the discounted rate of $3.99 per minute, only for RoofSwap members.
Speaking with your swap partners is a vital part of getting to know the family that will be using your home. RoofSwap's dedicated Language Line services expand your travel possibilities to cover the entire world. I'm excited that I won't miss out just because an offer comes from one of the many countries where I don't speak the l [removed][removed] anguage. This service is only offered by RoofSwap and is just one more reason to become a RoofSwap member today.
