What is the intent of "Cela ne nous dérange pas"?

Question

This is in the context of an email exchange, so no body language or voice tone.

If I ask someone the question: Alors, est-ce que ce plan s'intègre bien?

And they reply: Cela ne nous dérange pas.

Is that phrase generally used with a positive intent, like the phrase "no worries" in Australia, or could it be used to mean they don't care?

Addendum 1: To give more context, check my profile and scroll down to the bottom paragraph. In brief, the email is from a relative for whom French is their first language, whereas English is mine. They tend to dumb down their messages for my sake, although I'd prefer they didn't, because my reading in French is much better than my speaking and I can usually work out what they're saying with the help of a dictionary and grammar books. Of course idiomatic stuff is more problematic.

Addendum 2: Whatever the context, I do also want to know how that phrase is used in French in general, so that when I find myself in a similar situation with a stranger, I can use a phrase that does not imply offence when it's not intended and also vice versa.

Answer 1

This is a figure of style, a euphemism, specifically litotes, like saying "Il ne fait pas chaud" to mean "Il fait froid." French does this a bit, using the negative when other languages might use an affirmative phrase.

"It's fine."

Cela ne nous dérange pas = Cela nous plaît, grosso modo.

Without more context, if you feel doubt on the level of satisfaction, you could respond with Très bien, donc cela vous plaît/convient toujours bien ? ou Sans soucis j'espère.

Answer 2

Visiting relatives

If the context was visiting relatives, like planning a visit and you frame this as not creating problems, then indeed it may be some form of euphemism. If I now understand cela to refer to your visit rather than its planning, it now feels to me a bit like « you won't bother us one way or the other ».

---

Had this been a business setting concerning an ongoing project:

Just an impression, but I find the answer underwhelming and slightly off; it feels detached to me. I wonder whether there was more text in the email or whether there was a recent string of email exchanges between you and them which might provide more cues as to their style etc. Maybe they're very formal.

No, this construct is not used that I know of to mean something like "no worries" yet it doesn't mean that they "wouldn't care" either. They seem intent on expressing whether something impedes them with what they have to do or whether it doesn't, the latter seemingly being the case here. A bit like "we have no issues with that".

Answer 3

"It's fine" or "Fine with us" is really rendered by "ça va", "c'est bon", or "ça nous convient", and also "voilà qui est parfait"; as such, "it's fine" can still be used to translate "ça ne nous dérange pas" ; however, this translation fails to insist on the fact that whatever prompted the use of "ça ne nous dérange pas" has been acknowledged as something that causes no disagreement and/or no problems. More to the point would be the reply "It doesn't bother us.".

B.− [Le compl. d'obj. désigne un animé]
2. P. ext.
c) [Le compl. d'obj. désigne un animé hum.] Troubler dans sa façon d'être, de penser.
♦ Pourquoi Dieu ne reste-t-il pas chez lui et vient-il nous déranger? Notre malheureuse vie est si courte! Qu'il nous y laisse du moins en paix! (Claudel, Violaine,1901, IV, p. 641):
♦ Le prêtre (...) qui est un homme instruit et naïf, ne revient pas de cette théorie. (...) Que l'infini tienne dans le fini, est une proposition qui le dérange. Il fait observer que le contenu ne peut être plus grand que le contenant... Veuillot, Les Odeurs de Paris,1866, p. 213.

That is by the way an alternate translation given by DeepL, which proposes as first translation the very pertinent "We don't mind.".