>They felt entitled to prevent the taking of pictures in the restaurant and felt they were being played with false official documentation.
I naturally assumed that if Mann was going to offer the documentation to defend his wearing of the special glasses, to someone in France, then he would have been prepared with a notarized official French translation (heck, he's from Canada...).
If he seriously tried to give English-only documentation -- and that was really his plan to convince people in France that his glasses were legit -- that seriously changes my opinion of the events.
He should not have needed papers at all to convince people of anything. Wearing this kind of glasses, or bearing a photo camera, in public places, like restaurants is totally legal.
And actually, official translation are horribly expensive.
But as far as the translation goes, you can get forms for the country you're going to. That's how it was for Turkey, anyway. I don't know about France.
The form is multi-lingual (English/French/Turkish, in my case). The doctor fills in the forms and as long as he pays attention to the proper medical Latin words (and stamps it!) it should be fine. At least for border officials.
Still, from the lack of details in the blog post--he only refers to it as "a letter from my doctor"--whereas he painstakingly mentions every irrelevant detail in the story, I'm guessing that letter wasn't very complete, official, or even partially translated.
And while you are right that he shouldn't have needed it, trying to calm down an angry and aggressive French person by showing them a letter written in English is not very likely to improve the situation, and is indeed likely to get torn up in the process.
Which may not be right, but it's also not very smart.
I naturally assumed that if Mann was going to offer the documentation to defend his wearing of the special glasses, to someone in France, then he would have been prepared with a notarized official French translation (heck, he's from Canada...).
If he seriously tried to give English-only documentation -- and that was really his plan to convince people in France that his glasses were legit -- that seriously changes my opinion of the events.