Emergency equipment

English: Emergency equipment

French: Équipement de secours

Another type of “mechanical problem” you may encounter involves the emergency equipment that the airplane carries. As you may expect, an airplane needs to carry sufficient functional emergency equipment such as first aid kits, oxygen bottles, flashlights, fire extinguishers, etc. If you discover that some of this equipment needs replenishing, then they’ll need to come to do so. One way to translate “emergency equipment” is “équipement de secours”.

Équipement (m)=Equipment

De=Of

Secours=Help/aid

Équipement de secours=Emergency equipment

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Module 3 of Canadian French for Flight Attendants is available. Learn the French that flight attendants commonly use on the job: greet passengers, stow bags, drink and meal orders, duty-free service, seat changes, wheelchair requests, weather announcements and much more!

Modules 1 and 2: French basics and pass your flight attendant French test.

www.facebook.com/frenchforflightattendants

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Flight Attendant Souvenirs. Souvenirs d’un agent de bord. Okinawa, Japan. February 2015. Okinawa, Japon. Février 2015. From the ski mountains of Nagano, I landed in Okinawa a few days later, in southern Japan, where it was averaging low 20’s every day. This is Naha International Airport (OKA), serving the capital city of Naha, Okinawa Prefecture (like a province), located on the island of Okinawa, the largest island of the prefecture. Naha is actually geographically closer to Taipei than it is to Tokyo.

Door. Emergency exit.

English: Door. Emergency exit.

French: Porte. Sortie de secours.

Sometimes, mechanical issues can occur with airplane doors or emergency exits. The door through which passengers board and deplane is also an emergency exit in itself. Other doors and exits can be used by catering services to cater the aircraft. The cargo door(s) also needs to be opened and closed to load and unload bags.

A common mechanical issue with these doors is that when they’re closed, they don’t indicate closed in the flight deck. Similar to how a car’s dashboard shows if its doors and trunk are properly closed, indicators in the flight deck will also show if the plane’s various doors are open or closed. If they don’t show closed, then maintenance may need to come to rectify the issue.

“Porte” (f) you’ve already seen as the translation for “gate”, the place where airplanes park at the terminal. “Porte” is also a generic word that means “door” and can refer to almost any kind of door, including airplane doors.

Sortie (f)=Exit

De=Of

Secours (m)=Help/aid

Sortie de secours=Emergency exit.

Instead of ‘’Sortie de secours’’, you’ll also see ‘’Issue (f) de secours’’. For our purposes, the two expressions are interchangeable.

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Module 3 of Canadian French for Flight Attendants is available. Learn the French that flight attendants commonly use on the job: greet passengers, stow bags, drink and meal orders, duty-free service, seat changes, wheelchair requests, weather announcements and much more!

Modules 1 and 2: French basics and pass your flight attendant French test.

www.facebook.com/frenchforflightattendants

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Flight Attendant Souvenirs. Souvenirs d’un agent de bord. Nagasaki, Japan. February 2015. Nagasaki, Japon. Février 2015. Since I went to Hiroshima, I also decided to stop in Nagasaki, the other place where an atomic bomb was detonated in WWII. The colourful hanging decorations are paper cranes. Japanese legends say that anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish by the gods. In this context, thousands of paper cranes are left at the memorial site as a wish for peace. In Nagasaki, I also tried some “Donburi” and “Nagasaki Champon”.

Engine/Motor

English: Engine/Motor

French: Moteur

Mechanical issues can involve various parts of the aircraft. When mechanical issues occur, your pilots may make an announcement describing the problem and which part of the aircraft it affects. Nevertheless, their explanation will usually be simple. Flight attendants and most passengers alike will not understand technical details of a mechanical issue, so trying to explain the technical details will not be very productive. Passengers tend to care more about how this mechanical issue will affect them. How long will the delay be? Will it be a quick fix or will it take a long time? Will this cause the flight to be cancelled?

As such, your French translation of the mechanical issue need not be too technical or detailed either. For example, if the mechanical issue has to do with the airplane’s engines, we can simply tell passengers that there’s a mechanical issue with the engines without delving into the technical details.

In French, we can use the generic term “moteur” (m) for “engine” or "motor".

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Module 3 of Canadian French for Flight Attendants is available. Learn the French that flight attendants commonly use on the job: greet passengers, stow bags, drink and meal orders, duty-free service, seat changes, wheelchair requests, weather announcements and much more!

Modules 1 and 2: French basics and pass your flight attendant French test.

www.facebook.com/frenchforflightattendants

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Flight Attendant Souvenirs. Souvenirs d’un agent de bord. Fukuoka, Japan. February 2015. Fukuoka, Japon. Février 2015. Heading south, I changed trains in Fukuoka and had a few hours to explore the city’s temples and parks.