faire la rencontre

[alan gould]

I believe “faire la rencontre” means “to bump into someone you know” and yet I saw the sentence “J'ai fait la rencontre de personnes intéressantes ce soir” translated as “I met some interesting people this evening” which would seem to mean “meet for the first time.” 

 

[Chantal Savignat]

Hello

I don't know exactly what "to bump into ..." means,

But "j'ai fait la rencontre de personnes ..." means really that you met some people for the first time and can't have another meaning.

[George Hunt]

 "To bump into ..." means that you meet someone  you know without having planned to (accidentally). It is a little surprise.

[alan gould]

You'll hear just as frequently "I ran into X today."  I'm assuming you know what "to bump into" literally means -- for your body to accidentally hit something.    

My confusion comes from the Reverso dictionary.  It has both "to meet" and "to bump into" someone you know.  In addition to the sentence I gave above, it also has:  

J'ai fait la rencontre de notre voisin en allant chercher le journal.      It translates it as: I bumped into our neighbour when I went to get the paper.  

[Chantal Savignat]

ah ok (I'm french, so expressions ... :)

maybe in reverso you look for "rencontre" or "rencontrer" :

the difference is in the verb "faire" :  rencontrer =/= faire la rencontre. Not a big, big difference in meaning but a difference.

for "I bumped into our neighbour when I went to get the paper." if you know your neighbour before, you rather say "j'ai rencontré notre voisin en allant chercher le journal" without the verb "faire".  (But frequently if you ran into X, you would say "je suis tombé sur X")

With the verb "faire"  : "J'ai fait la rencontre de notre voisin en allant chercher le journal." it means that you didn't know your neighbour before, and you went to get the paper and you met him for the first time.

[alan gould]

I looked for "la rencontre" and got the example I gave you.  They gave a poor translation because even though "bump into" means it wasn't foreseen, you would say "I met my neighbor for the first time" rather than "bump into" which means you've met them before.   

[Chantal Savignat]

oh in French too, we have a lot of expressions to say that we met a neighbour according to the way we met him.

- j'ai croisé le voisin => we didn't speak

- je suis tombé sur le voisin => I ran into him (maybe your "I bump into ...")

- j'ai rencontré le voisin => I met the neighbour and we spoke.

- j'ai fait la rencontre du voisin => I met him for the first time

and there are a lot of words to add to tell exactly the meet

and "la rencontre" has a lot of other meanings :

a official meeting with a boss is "une rencontre"

a sport match is  "la rencontre"

a collision, you could hear "la rencontre"

[Neil Coffey]

Hi Chantal -- thanks for this excellent summary of the choices. And yes, I think "je suis tombé sur..." is quite close to the sense of "I bumped into...".