Scan barcode
A review by mar_reads7
Unexpected by E.J. Blaise
Did not finish book. Stopped at 24%.
I just don't think this author has ever met a bilingual person and while none of the portuguese I read was wrong (if I ignore that she wrote aniversarió instead of aniversário) literally not a single bilingual person acts how it was portrayed in this book and it was very annoying to read.
Also I speak portuguese and I understood all the portuguese in the book, but there were no translations anywhere for people who don't. Yes, I know you can look it up and that the kindle app lets you select text and translate it but that doesn't always work. For instance Nicolas, the bilingual character says "tudo jóia?" at one point, and I as a portuguese person know that that's an expression brazilian people use to ask how's things, or how are you, something along those lines. I was curious to see if kindle would translate that correctly and the translation I was given was "all jewellery?" which yes, is the literal translation of what was written but it is also a useless translation because it lacks the context of the expression. So I'm annoyed that the book poorly portrays bilingualism, but also annoyed that the book is not accessible to people who don't speak portuguese and don't have any brazilian portuguese context to help them understand what's being said when the language is used.
Also I speak portuguese and I understood all the portuguese in the book, but there were no translations anywhere for people who don't. Yes, I know you can look it up and that the kindle app lets you select text and translate it but that doesn't always work. For instance Nicolas, the bilingual character says "tudo jóia?" at one point, and I as a portuguese person know that that's an expression brazilian people use to ask how's things, or how are you, something along those lines. I was curious to see if kindle would translate that correctly and the translation I was given was "all jewellery?" which yes, is the literal translation of what was written but it is also a useless translation because it lacks the context of the expression. So I'm annoyed that the book poorly portrays bilingualism, but also annoyed that the book is not accessible to people who don't speak portuguese and don't have any brazilian portuguese context to help them understand what's being said when the language is used.