I understand

After six months, I understand Spanish pretty well, and for speaking, stumble all the time, lots of hand signals, continue to rely on mime and use a lot of remote synonyms.  It’s taken 80 hours of tutoring and oodles of homework to get here.  I returned Rosetta Stone long ago. 

My bicycle card did not show up in the mail as it should have a couple weeks ago, so I sent a simple complaint in the best Spanish I could grab.  Then, of course,  I got an overly complicated response:

“En relación a su consulta respecto a su alta, queremos indicarle que ha sucedido una incidencia en el registro y no nos consta en nuestra base de datos.  Comprobaremos si el abono de la subscripción se ha realizado correctamente y una vez hecho procederemos a restablecer el registro y al envío de la tarjeta de abono del Bicing.  En caso de no haberse producido el abono se lo comunicaremos a fin que pueda repetir el alta.  Lamentamos las molestias que este hecho le haya podido ocasionar, quedando a su disposición.”

So I copied and pasted the whole thing into Google Translate and this is what came out... 

“Regarding your question about your discharge, we tell you it happened a bearing on the record and we recorded in our database.  Check if the payment of the subscription was successful and once done proceed to restore the registry and send the card for payment of Bicing.  In case of absence of the fertilizer will tell you can repeat to discharge.  We regret any inconvenience that this may have caused you, being available.”

Hmmm, pretty sure I didn’t write in about a medical condition or a problem with my garden, so with my ugly, but most excellent dictionarywww.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp, slowly learned that this is what the letter had actually said...

“Regarding your question about membership, we would like to tell you that there has been some problem in the registration and you are not recorded in our database.  We will check if the payment has been correctly posted and then we will try again to get you your Bicing card.  In case we cannot find the payment, we will let you know, and then,  if you wish, you can repeat the registration process.  We regret any bother this may have caused you and remain at your disposal.”

I am proud to say, I got my bicycle card in the mail today.  And I’ll just keep at those Spanish lessions!