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Perhaps he meant to write: "quarter of four". As opposed to: "quarter to four".

Which would still be really strange and not understood by most Brits (source: am Brit)

In old-ish French (spoken by my grandparents' generation in some parts of Belgium), you can still hear "la demie de 2 heures" and "le quart de 7 heures", which directly translate to "the half of 2 hours" and "the quarter of 7 hours". They in fact mean 1:30 and 6:45! (am or pm depending on the context).

Also in current Dutch, at least as spoken in Belgium aka Flamish, we say "half twee" which means "half two" and refers to 1:30.

Quarter four in German is 3:15

It's not uncommon in some areas of the UK to swallow the "to", basically poor diction, which to the untrained ear it would sound as "quart'a four". It doesn't happen with "past", but then people often miss off the hour and just say "quarter past".

In Russian as I was taught in high-school they refer to the coming hour, like "15 minutes of 3" is 02h15.