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karinalovesbooks 's review for:
Gravity
by Tal Bauer
So.... this was funny, but not funny haha, funny weird, funny like nobody actually talks like this.
Let me preface this by informing you all that I am a French-Canadian from Quebec and perfectly trilingual. My best-friend mother tongue is English and is totally bilingual.
Do we both have an accent, yes, do we randomly insert phrases in our mother tongue when speaking with people that speak only one of the language we speak when communicating with them ... no.
Now this book would've WILDLY improved if this had been read by a or multiple French-speaking Quebecer's. It is riddled with mistakes, in French and other typos (see quote bellow), using expressions that I haven't heard in years. An overuse of Calisse, Tiguidou, etc. and weirdly enough kept reminding us that he was "French-Canadian" as if we were going to forget it ?
There are so many literal translations, that make no sense in French because the sentence structure is different. There are also parts where the author so clearly used google translate and others where he just skips words when translating.
It started being a game, while I was reading, to ask my brother or friends "I'm going to read you a conversation with a sentence in French and I want you to guess what the author meant to say vs what they wrote".
Quotes :
"I say nothing, just turn and smile back, though it feels forced, wan and very French-Canadian."
p.61 of the physical copy (not sure what wan was supposed to be)
"Je suis né pour le petite pain"
p.59
(again pain is masculine so petit not petite)
"Peut être"
p. (can't remember) this is not maybe contrary to what the author stated in his translation. This is he can be "can be", maybe in turn (which is what he wanted to say) would've been "peut-être", the distinction is very important.
"Et tu ? Comment ça va ?"
p.135
tu is not you as you is in English there are distinctions in French, let me explain, tu is used before a conjugated verb it's a subject pronoun e.g." you are beautiful" = "tu es beau" (because you are the subject) VS "I am thinking about you" = "Je pense à toi" (where you're specifying what you're thinking about) . In this case when asking someone "And you" it would've been "Et toi ?" because toi is an emphatic pronoun to use after a preposition.
also a weird "Surprendre" when they want to say surprise, which spoiler alert is also Surprise in French in that context, not the verb surprise as what was used.
Anyhow moving on, this book was a letdown, very and I mean VERY cheesy, predictable. Weirdly played into Stereotypes about French-Canadians. There's so many un-realistic reactions when you know about the league and how toxic it can be.
Everything happened so fast and slow, like the first half was super slow and enjoyable and then everything felt rushed. The author tried to fit so much in the last third of the book, that it felt like I did not care about what was happening to our MC's.
Overall, if you speak French, just skip this book, I was so excited about it and now I just can't believe the high rating, it has to be from non-French speakers. Unless you want to play the game of "guess the meaning " too and feel frustrated don't read it. There's so many things I looked past when I first started reading it, but I got to the point where I couldn't understand why the author made this choice.
If he wanted to have a Montreal, French Quebecer "Pure Laine" he should've done his research, it's insulting how little the author knows and tries to pass it off as "quirky" and "cute French", I wouldn't have minded it IF he wasn't pushing the point by making him use bad French and weird inserts of it every other sentence/paragraph.
It is so obviously written by someone who did not care, doesn't really speak French and only wanted it to make them (our MC) "interesting", like that's what made him different. Because he has, and pretty much every other character in this book, no personality.
One is defined by being from Texas and the other French-Canadian Quebecer, just skip this read.
Bookarina
2.5/5✨
Let me preface this by informing you all that I am a French-Canadian from Quebec and perfectly trilingual. My best-friend mother tongue is English and is totally bilingual.
Do we both have an accent, yes, do we randomly insert phrases in our mother tongue when speaking with people that speak only one of the language we speak when communicating with them ... no.
Now this book would've WILDLY improved if this had been read by a or multiple French-speaking Quebecer's. It is riddled with mistakes, in French and other typos (see quote bellow), using expressions that I haven't heard in years. An overuse of Calisse, Tiguidou, etc. and weirdly enough kept reminding us that he was "French-Canadian" as if we were going to forget it ?
There are so many literal translations, that make no sense in French because the sentence structure is different. There are also parts where the author so clearly used google translate and others where he just skips words when translating.
It started being a game, while I was reading, to ask my brother or friends "I'm going to read you a conversation with a sentence in French and I want you to guess what the author meant to say vs what they wrote".
Quotes :
"I say nothing, just turn and smile back, though it feels forced, wan and very French-Canadian."
p.61 of the physical copy (not sure what wan was supposed to be)
"Je suis né pour le petite pain"
p.59
(again pain is masculine so petit not petite)
"Peut être"
p. (can't remember) this is not maybe contrary to what the author stated in his translation. This is he can be "can be", maybe in turn (which is what he wanted to say) would've been "peut-être", the distinction is very important.
"Et tu ? Comment ça va ?"
p.135
tu is not you as you is in English there are distinctions in French, let me explain, tu is used before a conjugated verb it's a subject pronoun e.g." you are beautiful" = "tu es beau" (because you are the subject) VS "I am thinking about you" = "Je pense à toi" (where you're specifying what you're thinking about) . In this case when asking someone "And you" it would've been "Et toi ?" because toi is an emphatic pronoun to use after a preposition.
also a weird "Surprendre" when they want to say surprise, which spoiler alert is also Surprise in French in that context, not the verb surprise as what was used.
Anyhow moving on, this book was a letdown, very and I mean VERY cheesy, predictable. Weirdly played into Stereotypes about French-Canadians. There's so many un-realistic reactions when you know about the league and how toxic it can be.
Everything happened so fast and slow, like the first half was super slow and enjoyable and then everything felt rushed. The author tried to fit so much in the last third of the book, that it felt like I did not care about what was happening to our MC's.
Overall, if you speak French, just skip this book, I was so excited about it and now I just can't believe the high rating, it has to be from non-French speakers. Unless you want to play the game of "guess the meaning " too and feel frustrated don't read it. There's so many things I looked past when I first started reading it, but I got to the point where I couldn't understand why the author made this choice.
If he wanted to have a Montreal, French Quebecer "Pure Laine" he should've done his research, it's insulting how little the author knows and tries to pass it off as "quirky" and "cute French", I wouldn't have minded it IF he wasn't pushing the point by making him use bad French and weird inserts of it every other sentence/paragraph.
It is so obviously written by someone who did not care, doesn't really speak French and only wanted it to make them (our MC) "interesting", like that's what made him different. Because he has, and pretty much every other character in this book, no personality.
One is defined by being from Texas and the other French-Canadian Quebecer, just skip this read.
Bookarina
2.5/5✨