Reading translations

Never, if you don't move to Russia and stay live here 3-5 years with real speaking practice every day.

Leggi Manganelli, Malaparte e Moresco user, cambierai un po' idea. Anche Marinetti, volendo.

>he reads books for the prose

S I X
I
X

This

>m-muh perhaps even more worthless gymnasium, English public school, lyceé, whatever where we learned to boast about our superiority on Nepalese tapestry weaving forums

Sorry your grades weren't good enough to get into an American university, chump.

I don't
I am bilingual, Spanish English and I try to read every English author in English. When it's russian or something else I usually read it in Spanish.

What If I don't care about speaking Russian, but only want to read it?

>not enjoying the translator's prose

Aka, the sensible thing to do with the languages you know.

>state college

there's your fucking problem. Proper American institutions and their standards are no joke.

I tried and failed to get in

I checked out the Modern Library's English translation of In Search of Lost Time's first volume: Swann's Way, from my library, and I'm thinking about giving the entirety of it a go.

Since I'm learning German right now and my university's pace and rigor forces leaves me very little room to pursue another language simultaneously, I don't see myself acquiring French any time soon and definitely not at the modernist literature point any time soon.

idk, translated has become synonomous with "corrupted" and "bastardized" to me. Is this a worthwhile pursuit?

I agree, I've been living in Russia for 6 years now and I speak the language more or less fluent but Tolstoi and Dosto are still a tough nut. Anyone who teaches himself online or plans to take a russian class just so he can read the classics, is up for a sad suprise.

Welp, guess that plan goes into the bin.

German and english. My mother tongue is russian but I never cared to elaborate on it.

Sometimes Russian classical literature is hard to understand even for native speakers, for example:
Лeтит кибиткa yдaлaя;
Ямщик cидит нa oблyчкe
B тyлyпe, в кpacнoм кyшaкe.
Most of Russians don't know what is means кибиткa, oблyчoк, кyшaк, because it's very old worlds.

This is just what you want the average Veeky Forums poster to be so you won't feel threatened by their attitude and tastes while browsing the board bruh

Oh well, there are still enough authors left that are easier to understand. If you are learning Russian and want to read something, I'd recommend someone like Dovlatov for starters.

>I'm French, I speak English and can read and understand Spanish and Italian.
>mfw

Or Victor Pelevin, I guess it would be interesting.

Seems like a bit of an overstatement. I've only been learning Russian for about two years, with several months doing fuck all, and I can sometimes read a full page of Tolstoy without checking a word. If I keep stuffing myself with vocabulary every day, why wouldn't I be able to read the classics in about two more years ?

Sure, Russian isn't the easiest language to learn, it takes time, but 5-6 years + staying in a Russian speaking country seems ridiculous.

That means you have to rely on translations to read decent literature? Sorry to hear that.

:^) Meme harder m8

But the same thing could be said for other languages. Of course you'll encounter archaic words if you're going to read classics.

I'm not saying that it's impossible. Some people are better at learning a language than other. Best of luck! But as pointed out, the language in the books often differs from modern Russian and uses vocbulary that you won't find in some online class. Also, staying in Russia gives you a chance to get to know the way people think and feel over here. In a lot of ways the West and Russia are alike but there is also alot off stuff that doesn''t make sense to us, if we look at the country from the outside. Living here gives you the chance not only to read the books but also to understand a bit better, why authors wrote that way.

Aka the emme tetralogy.

Yes, I'm in my 30's, from Argentina and I grew up watching subtitled movies, listening to rock in english, etc. And then with the internet it's inevitable to read and write in english when posting on forums and stuff. So it was a natural evolution. I started reading literature in english when it was some rare item that I could not get here, but now I'm just doing it for the sake of reading the author in the original language. I consider myself lucky to be able to read Borges or Cervantes, and then Moby Dick, all in their original language.
So yes, bilingual here

>implying translators aren't often great writers/poets themselves
>implying prose/style can't be translated

Translation is a pretty advanced field of study. There is a reason some translations are shit while others arguably improve upon the book. Besides, even when translations were pretty bad, which is the case with a lot of older translations, people still read and enjoyed them enough for them to become classics in English, prompting improved translations to come out frequently afterward.

I don't care about the ring or sound of a language. I don't care about symbolic meme writing. I only care about the straight honest content so translations are completely fine as long as they're accurate.

>state college
your point?

People always fucking exaggerate about how long it takes to learn languages, but it's because they're both stupid and studying ineffectively. It took me half a year of Germany to get to a level sufficient for Nietzsche and Goethe, and after three months in France I'm not doing to bad with Dumas (Houllebecq and Camus were already pie after two months).
I'm sure a year in Russia will be enoughfor Tolstoy with the right mindset, at least for me.

I know portuguese, spanish, english and japanese desu ne.

*too bad. And yeah, my native language is Swedish so I'm already quatrilingual.

Nice I can definitely respect that.

I read translated novels (and usually novels in general) for the characters, themes, plot, etc.
When I want to read something that sounds good I'll read English poetry or good English prose like Melville, Browne, Burton, etc.

this t.bh. the >reading translation meme is the only meme I feel bad when people here fell for it.

Monolingual pleb detected

Douglas Hofstadter wrote a lovely book on literary translation titled Le Ton beau de Marot. :)

pure e-penis

Do you know differences between Germanic languages and Slavic languages? Yes, if your native language from Germanic family it's a not big deal to learn German, French or English, but if you want to learn language from another family it's not easy as you think.

Is it translated to English?

They're still IE languages, but yeah of course I know that it's harder. It does seem like there is still a lot of shared vocabulary, though, so I'm not too worried.

Pretty sure it's written in English originally.

Who is this semen demon?

I want to learn Russian for reading but unless I'm in Russia or Goa it would be useless in the real world. :(

Emma Roberts

>but unless I'm in Russia or Goa it would be useless in the real world
Or Turkey and Egypt

>german, french and english universities all rank below that of america
wew

Nice feet.

English, Italian and Portuguese, next is French

I want her to step on my face ;_;

I fell for this meme when I attempted don quijote on my high school level +duolingo spanish. Went two chapters before admitting I understood basically nothing. Fuck you assholes.

My guess is
35% american
25% latin american
20% europe
15% UK
5% "other"

He wrote it in English. :)

Would have actually respect if you learned japanese for japanese literature which is clearly not the case.

Girls with high arches
are like a hurricane of MDMA
blasting in my face
while I watch anime

Ask yourself why you didn't understand it. Work on that.

Kek tbphwy senp.ai

...

I speak english, portuguese and french.
I'm thinking about german, but I've been lazy nowadays.

Dann erklär mir mal Nietzsche auf deutsch. Ich kann ihn dir übrigens auf russisch erklären, dafür habe ich habe mehr als sechs Monate gebraucht.

I bet you are not even bilingual, you disgusting normalfag.

French is a romance language, stupid american. It doesnt belong in the germanic family. We just borrow some words.

It has nothing to do with frankish, since my ancestors dropped it for latin and then it become the french language.

Get off your /r9k/ horse. There is nothing normal about learning a language to read literature.

Just go back to where you came from.

>We just borrow some words.
>some words
Typical frog's.

You should change your attitude. This board is neither your anime heaven nor do I recommend trying to fit in with those jerks to begin with.

I have been here since this board was created. You type like you just came over from plebbit or something, so stop trying to act like you know what the fuck you are talking about and just lurk for some years.

Because I tried to read it in spanish and I don't know spanish

I'm sorry. You just talk like the stereotypical Veeky Forums manchild so I didn't know whether you're a newfag parrot or an OG. Now that I have experienced how mighty your status is I will think twice before I engage in an argument with another anime pro.

Were you expecting a hugbox or something? And stop bumping this shitty thread to page 1, this isn't literature.

Meme me up senpai. What else do you have in your gold treasure of anime advice?

What are some good books to help learn Russian? For beginners

Cпacибo

You mean for grammatic? If you mean in a general sense I don't think a book will be very helpful. I would recommend first learning the russian alphabet and then the grammatic. Really, just the steps you need for learning any language. The rest is grinding the vocabulary and reading practice.

>tfw speak Dutch, French and English
>always buy my books written in or translated into English because i don't like my own language and the literature it produces

flat feet

featureless uncurled toes

what a shame desu

>tfw only speak German, Spanish and English
>tfw don't speak Russian

Ezra Pound said that every great age of literature is an age of translations, so I feel no shame in saying that I would not want to rely on my shaky French and scant German to read Celine and Kafka. I am working on remedying that, but tell me, did you learn 14th-century Tuscan to read Dante?

There's no shame in getting your start with children's literature if you leave it behind as an adult. But this what you hate - you're still chasing the sugar fix of childhood escapism and wondering why it just leaves you feeling sluggish these days.

Same here, plus learning German

her feet are fine faggot

i'd suck her toes

>bilingual
>the only other language I know has no great literary works

her tops are fine.

her soles are pig disgusting for reasons noted

ok soles

esperanto?

Amharic (Predominant language of Ethiopia)

i've seen some local efiops read funny letter language book

I've slowly just stopped reading translations but honestly I'm never going to learn another language

I feel like some writers are fine to read translated

> Knausguard, cus it's pretty basic
> Nabokov, cus it's still good tootin prose
> Proust, cus...I really cba with french
> Houelbeuqe cus he's rubbish and I can't spell his name anyway and cus franCH

only proving my point for me

>Expecting people to miss out on great literature if they don't speak English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Chinese AND Japanese (etc.)