phone tag | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Asituationin which two individuals attempting to contact each other by telephone repeatedly do not get a live person and instead trade messages, such as byvoice mail.2000, Sharon MacDonald, Gilbert Cockton,People and Computers XIV - Usability Or Else!: Proceedings of HCI 2000:"What frequently results is a game ofphone tag. One party tries to reach another, is unable to, and leaves voice-mail indicating an interest in finding a time to meet. The other party returns the call, more often than not fails to reach the original caller, and leaves voice-mail in response."2005, Dorothy A. Maxwell,Phone Skills for the Information Age:"Avoidphone tag, which results when two parties go back and forth trying to reach each other by phone."2006, Steven Fishman,Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & Consultants:"To reduce the time you spend playingphone tag, ask what time the client will be in and call back then."

Examples:

EN: Well, we've been playing phone tag with a new client from New York all day.
ES: Hemos estado tratando de localizar a un cliente de Nueva York.
EN: We're having ourselves a game of phone tag here.
ES: Ahora sí andamos jugando al gato y al ratón por teléfono.
EN: Ah, we've been playing phone tag.
ES: Estuvimos jugando a las escondidas.
EN: The person you were playing phone tag with last night.
ES: La persona con la que estabas hablando anoche.
EN: It was a simple game of phone tag.
ES: Era un simple círculo de llamadas.
EN: -I'm playing phone tag with Brian.
ES: - Brian y yo no logramos comunicarnos.
EN: - We're playing phone tag.
ES: - Nunca nos encontramos.
EN: I'm sorry we had to play phone tag the last couple of days.
ES: Lo siento, tuvimos que jugar al teléfono descompuesto.
EN: We play phone tag.
ES: Nos dejamos mensajes telefénicos.
EN: I'm not sitting around while you play phone tag.
ES: No me voy a quedar sentado mientras haces tus juegos burocráticos.
EN: Oh, we're playing phone tag.
ES: Ah, estamos jugando a dejarnos mensajes.
EN: Sorry we've been playing phone tag.
ES: Lamento que no nos hayamos encontrado.
EN: Yeah, we're playing phone tag.
ES: - Si conseguimos que se ponga al teléfono...
EN: I've been calling and we've been playing phone tag and I thought that if I came down... - Okay.
ES: He estado llamando y no los localizo y pensé que si venía, quizá...
EN: I've been playing phone tag with Uncle Clive's solicitor
ES: He estado jugando esctribiendo telefónicacmente con el abogado el tío del Clive.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).