avoiding the plus-que-parfait

Question

I want to translate the following into French:
When I had signed the letter, Maurice mailed it.
I would write this:  "Quand j'avais signé la lettre, Maurice l'a envoyée."
What I want to do is avoid the pluperfect in the subordinate clause. l reached for the usual stand-by "Après avoir/être + past participe" but that will not work here, as there are two subjects and "Après avoir signé la lettre, Maurice l'a envoyée" means "After having signed the letter, Maurice mailed it" but it also means that Maurice both signed it and mailed it. I have always used "Après avoir ..." in the context of there otherwise being one subject.
I then tried "Après que ..." but I still end up with the pluperfect because inescapably the signing of the letter is complete and precedes the posting of it by Maurice.  Then I thought to use the passive, but that seems generally to be anathema to the French and it is really clumsy to try it here.  Then I thought to change the exact English formulation of the sentence and use "J'ai signé la lettre et puis Maurice l'a envoyée" but I don't think that that helps (or is correct). The signing precedes and is complete before Maurice's action and I keep ending up with the obvious - passé composé for Maurice's action and plus-que-parfait for the action that preceded it (signing).
Any solution please to re-write the original in a way that avoids using the pluperfect in the subordinate clause?

Accepted Answer

Bonjour Len P.,
Please take a look here: how to avoid the plus-que-parfait
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !

Answer

On reflection, I can only resort to the passive to solve this problem:

Maurice a envoyé la lettre qui avait été signé par moi.

Do you think that that is correct or am I missing something in my quest?

Answer

Ien p.,

this is not sounding like it is related to anything from this site ? Why are you specifically trying to avoid plus que parfait in French ?

“ J’ai signé la lettre et Maurice l’a envoyée. “ is one way of expressing these 2 past events happening, at least in everyday speech. Passé composé can be used repetitively with a list or series of ‘ separate ‘ completed events/actions.

Answer

It makes little sense to me to try to avoid the plus que parfait by replacing it with an even less used, more soutenu expression, unless you are trying specifically to do very formal writing.

The question remains ‘ why are you wanting to avoid the plus que parfait ? ‘ Are you trying to express a ‘ message ‘ or do an exact phrase translation ?