Hotel Searches for Sleeps 5 in Non-English or What does “Familienzimmer” Mean?








The internet has become much more user friendly for travelers searching beyond their home language but even still, limitations to the English-only search occur. For example, I can easily see that a search on Google for “hotel sleeps family 5 (insert german speaking city)” versus “Hotel mit Familienzimmer Hotel für 5 Personen” renders a very different list of possibilities. Try it! Once the various listings come up, click on one of the foreign-language websites. Your browser may offer the option to “Translate This Page”, but generally, the website will include a little American or British flag that one can click on which loads the English version of the website. Or better yet, make your high school foreign language teacher proud by muddling through the site without translation.
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Below, find links to translation sites, and a list of travel related words for internet searches.
Helpful Tools
During the process of researching for this blog article, I found some helpful sites for learning enough language to make a search.
Fodors.com/language/ – A list of easy travel phrases, numbers etc in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
Bonjour.com – Helpful French phrase tutorials.
Babelfish.com – Easy translation tool where one can copy and paste short paragraphs into the translation tool, in numerous languages.
Word Lists for Searching the Internet
Here is a listing of words that I use to search for non-English language sites. I am only listing those languages that I know well enough.
German/Deutsch
bed – Bett
family room – Famlienzimmer
five -fünf
guest house or inn – Gasthaus, Pension
hotel – Hotel
room – zimmer
room with five beds – fünfbettzimmer
people – Personen
Italian/Italiano
bed – letto
family room – famiglia camera
five – cinque
guest house or inn – pensione
hotel – albergo or hotel
room – camera
room that sleeps five -una camera che può ospitare 5 persone
people – persone
*Note – It appears that Italians describe a double bed as a camera matrimoniale which doesn’t translate colloquially.
French/Francais
bed – lit
family room -chambre familiale
five – cinq
quest house or inn – gîte ou auberge
hotel -Hôtel
room that sleeps five – une salle pouvant accueillir cinq personnes
people – personnes
I hope this list will help you in your search. Please let us know, as many of you do, if you have found other ways to search for that elusive room for five.
Happy Travels,
Holly
Sleeps5
Additionally, Sandy wrote previously about an important dining-related German word for travel in Germany, here.








