Do I need to know German to enjoy Kafka or do the English translations work well enough?

Do I need to know German to enjoy Kafka or do the English translations work well enough?

honestly man take it from an oldfag: don't waste your time

learn Italian, Italian translations are better

all the translations are bad so any will do.
He's considered a prose stylist in German, we lose that in the English translation.
Just get the ones with the eyes on them, they're fine.

Translations generally work pretty well, everyone just likes to act like a turbo-purist here on books that happen to be written in their languages.

You can't capture the poetry of his ironic, precise, functional German prose in translation. He's like Flaubert in that respect.

kafka was from prague he wrote in czech

but I believe he was like a Czech right? And that's his first language, so it seems like he went out of his way to make them German, as if they would only work in German

?
Kefka Palazzo was from Italy, retard.

Come on bruh. Yeah he was born in Prague, but that was in Austria-Hungary back in the 19th century and the official language was German.

His first language was German.

citation needed

br8 b8 m8

i think the English translations are fine. you're always gonna lose something when you translate... but most of what kafka does well is symbolism and abstraction, which translates well. german and english are very closely related, linguistically, anyway. so it should be fine

They all seemed pretty lackluster to me but I'm sure you can still gain something from it if not in form then in content.

I thought the Metamorphosis was extremely underwhelming, but I will give him another try when I get around to it. Any suggestions?

I speak German and English and read him in both languages. The English translation gets the job done and his stuff is still an interesting read. However, if you read it in German, those words flow like a river and it's an absolute pleasure to read. The English translations can get boring at times.

Jesus Christ

Wasn't he some kind of boss in Final Fantasy?

>I thought the Metamorphosis was extremely underwhelming
so did franz
the ending, at least

agreed

one, i got a degree in biblical studies. yeah useless i know. I can read the old testament's text fairly fluently and i can appreciate how some of it is amazing in the original and translations miss the mark, but we're talking 100% of literary value vs 95%. You still have 95% more from reading a good translation than the guy who takes 0% because of the 5% loss. It's literally like starving rather than eat something because it's not filet mignon, and I see a lot of people say don't bother with translations.

second, i went to an ivy league school and my philosophy professor used to go on tirades against hatred of translation. Most great philosophers read translation. Even those who knew Classical languages still read translations of those languages and other languages they didn't speak. Additionally, some great philosophers were monolingual but still knew tons of other works... because 95% is better than 0%.

The emphasis on translation is great insofar as it gets people to realize all translations are incomplete interpretations, but ffs people are ridiculous in thinking they should avoid kafka

Several of his works involve him playing around with language to unsettling effect which goes untranslated in English. As other say he's also a prose stylist with very calculated rhythm.

If you read him in German he is one of the very best. If you read him in English it's a little harder to see why he has such a legacy.