When I was younger and more naive, I thought that I would learn languages so as to read literature in each book's original language. Accordingly, in college, I studied Latin, Ancient Greek, and French. I found that learning languages is very challenging, yet with a lot of hard work you can successfully read through literature in its original language -- though it is not really enjoyable.
I then entered a period where I forsook my earlier attitude and decided to read things in translation, for at least I would get the content and do so in enjoyable, welcome English, yes?
Reading the Fagles Iliad translation, I cannot finish it. Because what I am ultimately reading is Fagles, derived from Homer. I am not reading Homer, nor am I even reading the Iliad: I am reading a long poem by Fagles inspired by Homer. What I want to read is Homer: his word choice, his sentence structure, etc.
The translation ends up being something debilitating, something that makes things easier but which ultimately sacrifices something greater. By having a translation available, why not just read it? So you do, and you spoil the opportunity to meet the original author properly.
I return to my original attitude. Works are only thoroughly appreciated when read in the original language. And instead of working through it to work through it, to say that I have done it, I should do it slowly and savor each sentence, each paragraph as I have understood it.
What is your opinion on the matter?
Jace Sanders
must suck to have such a desire but not the will to fulfill it. of you want to read Homer, read Homer. Hell the guy was a singer or whatever, you're never going to read him ever anyway.
Luke Martin
I'm a native German speaker. Read everything in German until I was 23. I was enormously interested in the English language from very early on but for some reason didn't pick up an English original until then. I never went back. If you enjoy the language, it's a grand thing to do. If not, you're bound to fail as I did with my recent attempt to read 100 years of solitude in Spanish. That holds true for all learning by the way.
Hudson Gray
wait, you converted to english from german and haven't looked back?
Luke Phillips
basically you are 100% correct. No work is truly replicable in another language. But ultimately am I going to spend years learning Russian just to read War and peace? and then when ive read that decide i want to read Rimbaud so I learn French? its unrealistic to say you can learn every language to read all these texts because we ultimately don't have the time to master all these languages alongside living a life to get proficient enough to properly appreciate these texts.
I'm currently learning Ancient Greek and Latin, Latin Ive been doing for some years and can read texts but it takes a lot of work and In Greek classes we need ridiculous amounts of aides and help in order to read basic Aesop fables.
So translations provide the best insight we have into the authors word choices but ultimately we can't say that is the true work of the original writer. Try and learn a language if you are interested in a certain nations literature but realistically you wont be able to learn every language to complete the canon
Julian Bailey
>knowledge is culturally specific and non-transmutable wew lad
Joshua Cook
you dont actually like reading
Charles Hill
I think he never went back to reading translations of English speaking authors, that is at least what happened to me.
Camden Garcia
>The Awful German Language by Mark Twain
Liam Robinson
this. >reading translation threads are worse than rupi threads, peterson threads, where-should-start-with-x threads, spook threads, dfw threads, kindle or real books threads. just kys, bro
