Asking a seller questions without speaking their language

When you read a listing, the foreign language matters less than you might think. The key data — year, mileage, fuel, gearbox, power — come from selection lists and appear on Carvexia in the language you are reading the site in. What stays foreign is the description: it appears exactly as the seller wrote it and is not translated.

The trouble starts when you ask questions. Every question you phrase freely has to be translated, and every answer translated back. In between, exactly the things that matter get lost: whether “serviced” means a receipt or a memory, whether “no damage” also rules out the repaired hail damage, whether “two keys” means two full keys or one key and an emergency blade. Misunderstandings like these only surface at the viewing — in other words, after the journey.

So the strategy is not to translate better but to need less translation. Anything that can be settled as a fixed question, a photo or a number does not belong in a sentence.

The enquiry form below every listing has a collapsible part, “Add questions about the car”. It is optional and contains a fixed catalogue of closed questions — questions that can be answered with yes, no, “don't know”, a number or a month. That is exactly what makes them independent of language: the seller picks an answer rather than writing one.

You can tick up to five questions per enquiry. The seller sees them with their listing and can answer them there, often also through a link sent by e-mail. What is stored is the chosen answer, not a sentence, which is why it appears on the car's page in every language the site exists in. A seller in Bologna picks “replaced” and a month for the timing belt; you read “Replaced 03/2023”. Whether and when they answer is up to them.

The answers then appear on the car's page for everyone interested, with a date. Questions that have been asked but not yet answered are shown as “open”. So look first at what has already been answered: the form no longer offers questions that have an answer, and your five are left for what is still missing. The catalogue covers:

Above the answers it says “Seller's statements, not checked”, or “Dealer's statements, not checked” for a dealer. That is meant literally. Carvexia checks none of these answers and compares them with no register. The statements make sure you understand what was said — not that it is true.

That does not make them worthless. A written, dated statement on a specific question is something different from an “all fine” on the phone. If the seller changes an answer, the earlier one stays visible in the change history. What they stated can later be laid next to the papers, the contract and the car. If a statement does not survive the viewing, that tells you something about the car and about the seller; if it is plainly wrong, you can flag it with “Statement wrong? Report it”.

Two more points. “Don't know” is an honest answer and often better than a guessed one — someone who bought the car second-hand may genuinely not know when the timing belt was done. And the only free text in the catalogue, the description of known defects, appears in the original, marked as not translated. That one you translate yourself, and if in doubt you ask.

Some questions are answered better by a photo than by any sentence, in any language. For this, the enquiry form has the option “Request photos”. You choose what you want to see, and the form writes the message from it. The seller can reply by e-mail or add the photos to the listing — then everyone can see them.

The message is written in the language you are currently reading the site in, and you can edit it before sending. The car's page exists in many languages; if you switch it to the seller's language first, the draft is in their language too, and the choices appear in the same order.

When the photos come back, look at what they show: whether the mileage matches the listing, whether warning lights are on, whether the service book has stamps with dates and mileages. The choices are the places where a car is hardest to flatter with a camera:

You will rarely manage entirely without sentences of your own. Your message reaches the seller exactly as you wrote it; Carvexia does not translate it. The reply comes straight to you by e-mail, in their language. If you use a translation tool, write in a way that leaves it little room for mistakes. What works:

Numbers do not get translated; at most they are written differently. So ask questions whose answer is a number: mileage at the last service, month and year of the timing belt change, date of the last test. For dates, the month/year format used in the seller's statements helps. A full date like 04/03/2024, on the other hand, is risky: in Europe it reads as 4 March, while a tool set to US English may read 3 April.

The most important number is the vehicle identification number, the VIN: 17 characters following an international standard, never containing the letters I, O and Q. Have it sent to you and compare it — with the papers, with a photo of the plate, later with the car itself. A number that is identical in three places needs no translation.

The papers speak a common language too, once you know their codes. Registration certificates in EU countries carry harmonised field codes: B is the date of first registration, E the vehicle identification number, whatever language the label next to it is in. The Swiss vehicle registration document has its own layout with numbered fields; there, the VIN is in field 23 and the first registration in field 36.

Always state amounts with a currency code — EUR, CHF, PLN, SEK — and ask the seller to do the same. If an odometer shows miles rather than kilometres, clear that up before anyone discusses mileage.

By the time of the contract at the latest, a translation tool is no longer enough. What you sign is binding whether you understood it or not. The cleanest option is a bilingual sales contract with both versions side by side, or a contract in a language you both read with confidence. Write the decisive details so that they need no language: VIN, mileage, price with currency code, date and place of handover.

The seller's statements help here too. Whatever the seller stated there — number of keys, no outstanding finance, no known hail damage — can go into the contract as a representation. If they refuse to sign something they stated publicly, that is an answer that needs no translation either.

Whether the registration office in your country requires a translation of foreign papers depends on the country and the document. Ask your local vehicle registration authority before the purchase, not after. The full sequence of a remote purchase is described in the guide on buying a car you have never seen.