ITT we post prose passages from books we've got on hand and anons guess whether the writing has been translated. No Google searching. If you must Google search then here's your hat and there's the homepage. Bonus points for the anons who support their guess with evidence from the passage. Just imagine how good you'll feel if you guess correctly honestly, how greatly your belief in your literary acuity might be strengthened.
I will start:
She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She thought of the long salons fatted up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.
zat's Maupassant. What made you think it was Fitzgerald?
Ian Anderson
Fitzgerald has a smooth-reading, beautiful style. Also, he sometimes uses strange somewhat pedestrian even verbs like "fatted," though he's also extremely intelligent and can paint a complex scene without anything seeming outta place
Landon Richardson
Maman died today.
Grayson White
>Maman Clearly it's the original. Pynchon is known for peppering his stuff with colloquial French.
Parker Lewis
Ok. I'll do a couple. Here's the first:
My mother turned and went to her bedroom where, in a house full of men and rods and rifles, she had faced most of her great problems alone. She was never to ask me a question about a man she loved most and understood least. Perhaps she knew enough to know that for her it was enough to have loved him. He was probably the only man in the world who had held her in his arms and leaned back and laughed.
Juan Morris
I don't get it. What would an English writer have used?
Jordan Hernandez
I really hope that's translated.
John Clark
You're trying too hard, mon cher
Angel Harris
L-Z-boys
Jose Morris
*La-Z-Boys
Caleb Garcia
fuck the french and you
Angel Davis
...I do not despise them. Their antics seem pitiable in my eyes. I note the fact for future reference with many others in my notebook. When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook – a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases. Under B shall come “Butterfly powder”. If, in my novel, I describe the sun on the window-sill, I shall look under B and find butterfly powder. That will be useful. The tree “shades the window with green fingers”. That will be useful. But alas! I am so soon distracted – by a hair like twisted candy, by Celia’s Prayer Book, ivory covered. Louis can contemplate nature, unwinking, by the hour. Soon I fail, unless talked to. “The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.” That will be useful.’
Ayden Bailey
Untranslated. But what is it? Sounds like high-functioning autism to me.
Noah James
We have you fucking Yanks to thank for writers like Fitzgerald. Take a look in the miroir, vous américain miette
Dylan Morgan
Try this:
With this the conversation ended, and we continued to walk in silence, side by side. On the summit of the mountain we found snow. The sun set, and—as usually is the case in the south—night followed upon the day without any interval of twilight. Thanks, however, to the sheen of the snow, we were able easily to distinguish the road, which still went up the mountain-side, though not so steeply as before.
Isaac Morgan
Sorry, It's not.
Alexander Cruz
the waves
the inner dialogues there are amazing... but they are like people never speak neither to others nor to themselves
Isaac Ortiz
>vous américain miette This sounds more insulting than it is.
Cameron Lewis
your people have produced nothing of consequence in the realm of philosophy or literature in the last century (and no, neither penis-algebra, cross-eyed heidegger-cribbing, feminism, maudlin cigarette smoking abt. meaninglessness nor
+ your country is the intl. equivalent of tumblr and you have a worldwide reputation for being pompous douchebags & surrender monkeys with a language curiously devoid of consonants but heavy on presciptive nonsense. curious how you interpolate your english with french, I imagine the reverse would be disallowed by your beareau of clean language ministers
FROGGIES PLS GO
Luis Phillips
..... Pynchon? Not Camus?
Thomas Wood
It is a shame you would allow the ideological architecture of modern France to obscure your view of the undepletable well of intellect that is my timeless cultural and intellectual accomplishment. The most powerful man anywhere is the most powerful man everywhere, and I have taken on Americans to English to Russians to you name it always to prove myself the cleverer. So you can say what you wish, but the strength of my country does not define the strength of my tongue.
And I am sorry, I will not watch your Youtube video, Monsieur.
Alexander Peterson
>night followed upon the day without any interval of twilight Translated.
