Lost in Translation: French T.V. Commercials

Sometimes, being an anglophone in France has its disadvantages. I have so spoken about my trials and tribulations about having my native tongue be butchered and badly used with the excessive possessive Apostrophe S and changing English movie titles from their original titles to another English title for French audiences.

In my case, my trained American ears cannot help but capture the often-in-English background music that is incorrectly used in French T.V. commercials.

What I mean by "incorrectly used" is that while said music would have its merits if presented in a neutral situation, such as listening to its catchy beats on the radio, when it is used for purpose of selling merchandise, the message depicted in the lyrics simply doesn't correlate with the product being pitched to audiences.

I'll present three examples of what I'm talkin' about.

Now, who doesn't love chocolate, I ask. With the exception of my mother, almost everybody does. (Seriously, her idea of "chocolate" is a Snickers bar, which is roughly 0.0000001% chocolate. It's insane.)

Still, despite a profound human love for the sultry, divine chunks derived from cocoa beans and its butter, the products still need to be marketed to people by the manufacturers and corporations. One vivid example is the Kinder Bueno hazelnut chocolate ad.




Any French person who sees this ad will chuckle at the situation of sharing the last Kinder Bueno bar with tennis star Jo Wilfried Tsonga and think nothing of the background song that is used in the end.

However, I, as an English speaker, know for a fact that the song used is Lily Allen's 22, which is about a grasshopper-who-sang-all-summer woman in her 30s whose life is depressingly "already over."



Thus, due to the fact that I understand the song's lyrics, the commercial's fairly innocuous message for consumption takes an inadvertent negative turn: Your life's over, bitch. Eat chocolate!

Either way, I can't eat Kinder Bueno hazelnut chocolates because I have a nut allergy. Welp.

Then there is the Elle & Vire crème fraîche commercial about how the rainy weather in Normandie is ideal for producing the best dairy products.




What the hell does it have to do with love fools? If anything, I may be facing a problem with all of that constant rain pouring from the sky, and that the weather itself is beseeching me to love it, love it, say that I love it and need it. Rain, rain, go away...

Also: this particular ad claims that it is not raining in the area between the Elle and Vire rivers in Normandie while demonstrating that it is CLEARLY FUCKING RAINING. WTF, France?


As a final example, I present this ad for a perfume called "La Petite Robe Noire" (The Little Black Dress).



The background song is about boots. BOOTS. The song is about BOOTS, people! GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

*insert a flurry of facepalms, headdesks and cartoon lip blubbering*

In short, as long as French ads improperly use songs in English, I will continue to yank the hair off my scalp.

Barb the French Bean

A Little Moment of Empty "Eureka!"

Over the weekend during a short trip to Tampa (technically, it was in Springhill, FL), I stepped into a local Publix grocery store and gasped with glee when I encountered a small shelf containing British goods. Among the selection of goodies I plucked to fill my basket were a couple of tins of Cadbury Original Drinking Chocolate.

As my brain reasoned, I love British Cadbury chocolate and I love hot chocolate. Finding Cadbury hot chocolate mix is a classic win-win scenario. I honestly heard in my head the "dah-nuh-nuh-nuh" music that plays whenever Link from The Legend of Zelda finds a treasure in a chest.


(I stress that I love British Cadbury chocolates because here in the States, we can buy a pseudo-Cadbury that is manufactured under the more prolific Hershey's; the taste is not the same. Just not cricket, what-what.) 


Shopping wasn't the only thing I did in Tampa. I also went out for a nice walk and saw Cypress trees and a gator swimming in the marshy water. That was pretty cool. 

Cypress tree

Anyway, as it is with most imported products, the Cadbury Original Drinking Chocolate packaging underwent the ritual of having an American-style nutrition label plastered directly unto the original European nutrition grid. I didn't think too much of this for it is what commonly happens to foreign foods over here. 

The Ye Olde American Nutrition Facts Label

However, it wasn't until I returned to Miami when I decided to pay closer attention to said label.


According to the new American label, one serving of the drinking chocolate, a tablespoon, contains 602 calories. 


"That is not possible," I thought to myself. "That cannot be nutritionally possible!"


Then, as if I had to prove my point as to why this could not be nutritionally possible, my inner schizophrenic began to reason and form an argument based on facts. 


"Of the chocolate I would eat in France, just 20 grams out of a 100 gram bar of chocolate would be roughly 125-130 calories. That means that the entire bar of chocolate, all 3.5 ounces of it, would just surpass 600 calories! How is one 15 gram tablespoon of powder more than that?"


"I mean, even a tablespoon of butter is just a little over 100 calories. And it's butter."


Curiosity got the better of me. I peeled off the American nutrition "facts" label, examined the British nutrition information grid, and nearly peed from laughter over the grievous mistake that had been committed. 

Grids are cool.

I do not know what poor soul at Cadbury USA had the responsibility of having to type up the American nutrition label, but I am fairly certain that it was an American who clearly did NOT know the difference between kj and kcal. Either that or they had misread the grid with one flippant glance. 


"I knew there was something wrong!" the voice in my head cheered. "It clearly says on the grid that 100 grams of dry powder are 370 kcal, or 1575 kj. As for the actual 18 gram serving of dry powder, prepared with 200mL of semi-skimmed milk, the concoction is only 165 kcal! Whoever did this label confused the 695 kj with the 165 kcal!"


My inner schizophrenic rejoiced with much rejoicing.


"I uncovered a mistake! I literally uncovered an error by removing the label! My detail-oriented skills have not completely gone to waste! I have faith that I am still a fully-functioning human being! YIPPEE! My life is complete! Ha ha ha!"


...Then I realized that this discovery of someone else's mistake on a food label amounted to being a big whoop by human standards. Yippee. 

Barb the French Bean