Non-native English-speakers who've read pic related, was it hard?

Translated works in my language are all done by ham-fisted Spaniards. Help!

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mine-control.com/zack/guttenberg/
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vocabulary.com/lists/25217
novelas.rodriguezalvarez.com/pdfs/Melville, Herman ''MobyDick''-En-Sp-Sp.pdf
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Vocabulary-wise, I've read more demanding books so it's standard 19th literature with some sailor slang.
Prose-wise, Melville is a master of language but some passages can be challenging with all the layers of metaphors and encyclopaedia trivia disguised as poetry. He also likes to play with the narrative, a lot, it was a highly experimental book for its time.
Regarding previous needed knowledge, the Bible and various classics are oft referenced, as well as some of Melville's contemporary scientists and philophers, but I own two editions and both have comprehensive footnotes about all the obscure references used, so maybe you'd want something similar.

I'm italian btw, so hope it helps.

Which editions have footnotes?

Not him, but I actually really like the Barnes & Noble classics edition. Too many footnotes really, but they were very helpful with the vocabulary.

South American fag here. I've been honing my skills because I want to read The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost and Shakespeare in the original. Those still pose a great challenge to me.

At the time when I first read Moby Dick I wasn't used to some stylistic phrasings common to 19th century English and some paragraphs are quite dense. At any rate, it was surprisingly easy to develop a rhythm to read at a comfortable pace.

Vocabulary wise, even shitty Wordsworth editions come with footnotes or a glossary which explains nautical or whale-hunting terms. I read a physical copy and my brain tried to use the tap->read definition you have on a Kindle, so if you have a smartphone with a dictionary, use it.

Since 90% of the action takes place in a boat, and this is described in great detail, it was slightly hard to get the scale of it and make a mental picture of where each action took place.

I read it in 5th grade or so.

No its not hard

Thanks! I was thinking of getting the Penguin Deluxe edition but it doesn't seem to have footnotes.

Not particularly, but you may have to use a dictionary for a some of the whale/ship related vocabulary

I dare say, Paradise Lost was easier in English than Moby Dick was for me. Maybe because the grammar construction reminded a lot Latin and it was less troubling understanding how each sentence worked.
If you haven't read it already, go for it, it is absolutely worth the effort.

The Barnes and Noble edition comes with a dictionary of those terms, not sure about the other ones.

Go for Paradise or for Moby-Dick?

Paradise Lost

just do it spaniard user, it'll improve your English immensely and its one of the greatest works of art ever assembled, you'll be happy you did read it I assure you

Lee la de editorial Alianza.

>it's standard 19th literature
No, it's got the most unique words of any english fiction book for its size and even as a native english speaker I was regularly finding words I'd never seen before.
It's incredibly demanding vocabulary-wise.

I'm Mexican, but thanks for the encouragement!

You must have read some children's edition.

Post some. It's been awhile since I read it and I can't remember

I don't have the book anymore and couldn't be bothered downloading a pdf

mine-control.com/zack/guttenberg/
The amount of unique words should give you an idea of of the vocabulary

>gargantua and pantagruel that high
>gibbons above the literal thesaurus
Hmm kind of got me interested, at least for G&P since it's already sitting in my stack.

Is the german version any good?

Sudaca crying cuz you don't have translations with stupid meme words.

Llámenme Ismael Felipe Rodríguez de Guadalupe, weys. La pinche ballena ayayay.

what’s good about it? I don’t care about translations

>>gibbons above the literal thesaurus
fucking based gibbon

vocabulary.com/lists/779811
vocabulary.com/lists/25217

Go to the lists section and search for Moby Dick (or for any other title)

This is seriously the worst book cover I have ever seen.

Whoever is responsible is lucky that Queequeg doesn't visit him one night in spectral form and pin him to the wall.

I dunno, maybe it helps that I grew up with the KJV and was force fed Shakespeare at school, but I thought the actual language of Moby Dick was fairly straightforward.
ps I do think its the greatest novel I've ever read and the comparisons to Milton are apt. Our guy Bloom described it as an epic prose poem and thats really how it is to be read.

Same here, having Bible and Shakespeare experience made Moby Dick a good bit easier to follow than I imagine it would be without that prior experience. Be sure to read it aloud, mexibro, that's how it should be read, and it will help you understand it more if you sound out the difficult bits

>ham-fisted Spaniards
*inhala*
JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA

>La pinche ballena ayayay
I've always dreamt of owning an editorial house to publish classical texts with kitsch spanish translations.

>sudaca
Pretty sure Mexico is in North America. Le butthurt Spaniard crying 'cause they have shit translators. Llamadme Ismael onda vital lobezno, tíos.

What? Keeping it gentle. They do a pretty mediocre job most of the time.

Lol Spain is actually known for the high quality and number of its translators/scholars. Seriously, you can buy pretty much any book from any language in a good translation

Found a pdf comparing two Spanish translations and the original text. There are choices I like from one and choices I like from the other, so I'm just going to the original, fuck it.

novelas.rodriguezalvarez.com/pdfs/Melville, Herman ''MobyDick''-En-Sp-Sp.pdf

>original word: coffins
>pompas fúnebres instead of ataúdes

top kek, just read the original.

kek you wish.

>original word: coffins
>he uses pompas fúnebres instead of ataúdes

top kek, just read the original.

Three quarters of the way through now.

There's some challenging diction, but once you wrap your head around it it's a thing of beauty. There are a hell of a lot of chapters focused entirely on informing you on the ins and outs of hunting, gutting and processing whales. Some of it's fascinating stuff, some of it drags. Although not required, some biblical knowledge will help you understand some of the references (the author brings up Solomon frequently).

It requires patience. I've heard people say that the middle of the book is just a shitload of stuff about whaling, and although that's partly true, there is a lot of subtext there. I wish I could pick up on it better, but I'm trash at construing novels.

There aren't as many whaling info dump chapters as people think. They serve to establish whaling as a legitimate topic for Epic. As somebody posted earlier Moby-Dick is an epic, closer to Paradise Lost than other novels. So we can see that all the human themes of the drama of classical literature and art also played out in the workaday lives of these ragbag multi-ethnic Nantucket whale catchers. This is the idea of the 'awesome' and profound nature of everyday life that people associate with modernism and why Melville is sometimes referred to as an early modernist, or at least a forerunner of that sort of stuff.

>original: the Lord
> translated as Jehovah

>original: stranded
>translated as capturada (captured) instead of varada (lit. stranded)

fucking lol

Ah, I get you. I'm new as fuck to non-babby tier literature, so I totally missed out on the reason behind the info dumps being there other than to help immerse the reader in the setting and provide a vessel for the book's themes.
If you don't mind me asking, what distinguishes Moby Dick as an epic?

No está TAN cabrón. Siempre es mejor leer la obra en su lenguaje original.

Have you read Moby Dick?

Gracias, compadre.

it’s written in verse

Thanks for the info, I ordered this one on Amazon already kek

Only the one by Friedhelm Rathjem is good, very good actually. God tier translator.

"somnambulistically".

I just really liked that word, the only one I remember off the top of my head.

>There aren't as many whaling info dump chapters as people think
Almost every one of the whaling chapters is also a deep metaphorical lecture about various things. They aren't useless, unless you think a book should just be a story.

Coming from a Spanish-language background where sonámbulo means "sleepwalker", I'm going to guess "somnambulistically" means sleepwalker-like?

Not him, but "somnambulism" is also an English word and yes that's basically what it refers to, walking in one's sleep. I don't think it's that uncommon of a word, actually.

The guy who translated to my language was translating it for around 15 years. He finally finished it last year and died. He was 43. He traveled to countries with sea just so he can translate the teminology because our country doesn't have a sea and never developed naval terminology.
He was a pseudoliberal though, but props to him, I might read it one day.

And what language is that?

>ham-fisted Spaniards
I can picture the triphthongs already

>Jehova
This one doesn't seem so bad since 'the Lord' seems a little too extra for simply 'dios'.

Although perhaps 'Papa Chu' would be the more literary choice.

"el Señor" would have been the proper choice. Jehovah doesn't add anything, why change it.

El Señor totally slipped my mind, it's perfect now that I'm bothering reading it in the context of the translation its in. I can still see the merit of the more "old-world" style even if it's not my preference