Skipping the translator's preface

How does it feel to translate wordplay, and rhyming that doesn't fly in the other tounge?

>reading the afterword first

>Preface to the German edition of 1872
>Preface to the Russian edition of 1882
>Preface to the German edition of 1883
>Preface to the English edition of 1888
>Preface to the German edition of 1890
>Preface to the Polish edition of 1892
>Preface to the Italian edition of 1893

>Preface to the preface of the preface of the preface of the preface of the preface of the Original(TM) preface.

I'm not looking to have the whole book spoiled

>Reading the author's introduction

>read introduction
>openly spoils what happens throughout the novel

>reading for the plot

>anthology has a "celebrity" introduction

>not reading for the plot
you should stick to cliffs notes. They don't even take as long as a whole book either! all the themes, plot, characters, they're all there!

>

>REEding

I have yet to read a single comment explaining how it is okay to read translations, ever. Do you think Proust ever thought "no I should use this word, it'll translate into English better"

>Author's preface to the 1901 edition
>Author's preface to the 1908 edition
>Author's preface to the 1918 edition
>Author's preface to the 1945 edition
>Author's preface to the 1967 edition
>Author's preface to the 1995 edition
>Author's preface to the 2001 edition
>Author's preface to the 2014 edition
>Author's preface to the 2020 edition

Im not going to learn Russian to read Dostoevsky you miserable insect

I used to look down on that. Then I read a bunch of books in a row where halfway through the preface/introduction/etc they just start laying out point by point what happens in the book, how, why, etc. I don't give a shit about some hack summary of the book, just let me fucking read it myself. I do go back when I'm done to read those, though.

...

>Cover Designer's Introduction

>editor preface of book in native language is over 300 pages long
fuck off

What the FUCK are you reading?

>Needing the translator's preface to understand the book

Communist Manifesto.

>preface
>introduction
>afterword
>citations
only the epilogue is worth considering and I wont

>the editor to reader
>it's actually part of the novel

back to Peddit you fucking genre fiction nigger

>mfw my edition of Bely's Petersburg has a 50 page introduction

>foreward
>introduction
>prologue
zinc ain't gonna read 30 pages about the school the author taught in since it doesn't affect the contents.

Half the time the translators preface spoils the plot of the book. And I know you're not supposed to care about plot at all, but god damn just let me enjoy it blind the first time, okay?

>translator spends 20 pages bashing previous translations for overusing prepositional phrases

skip it then read it at the end.

>read the translator's preface
>it's eight pages of "I couldn't think of a good word for this so I just translated it literally and gave it a footnote."

high quality

>Prefacing the skipper’s translation

>translator still includes footnotes pointing out when their diction is unconventional compared to commonly accepted translations

>the translator tries way too hard to come up with new terminology as a way to distinguish themselves from the canonical renderings and now you cant understand the secondary lit because it takes for granted you read the standard translation

>translator's preface implies the original work is untranslatable

That's goalpost shifting and you know it

Give me a good reason to, I just want to read what the author has put out there. Prefaces are just boring to me and not what I came for.

>translator leaves untranslated words in the text

>translator's preface is them whining about their college years and has nothing to do with the book

I usually just read the ISBN a few times to commit it to memory and then marathon the author photographer's preface.