"He is my colleague."
Translation:C'est mon collègue.
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849
They mean the same thing, but they're not interchangeable. Read more here: http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa032500.htm
The key (i think from my understanding of the article linked above) is the "my" in "my colleague." It's a modifier. The example given in the article is that "Il est avocat" and "C'est un avocat" both mean "He's a lawyer." You use "c'est" for the second one because "un" is a modifier, and I believe the same thing is in effect with "mon collègue."
849
In English, when we introduce nouns, we make a distinction between people (he/she) and inanimate objects (it). In French the same distinction isn't there - everything gets called "It". Here's a more in depth article on their differences:
http://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/cest-versus-il-elle-est
If that doesn't do it for you just search for "C'est vs il est" there's plenty of stuff out there.
Even in Polish there aren't such stupid rules as for "c'est" and "il est". This is the only language which I know and I know a few, in which you have to say "he is" differently according to the situation. Someone must be really bored to come up with such an idea.
1296
I tried to do he is my colleague with machine translation. Both Google Translate and DeepL Translator give out c'est mon collègue. However, when it comes to she is my colleague, Google gives out elle est ma collègue whereas DeepL recommends c'est ma collègue How tricky it is!