So... i'm not a native english speaker but i really want to read this...

So... i'm not a native english speaker but i really want to read this. Should i read the translation or the original withe dictionary and some guide books?

It's a difficult book even for a native speaker.

You know how well you can read English, it's your call.

If German, read the translation. I say this because, like as with Shakespeare, German scholarship on Joyce exceeds that in English.

You can read the translation and then the original

If you're very interested you could read a chapter of the translation, then reread the chapter in English.
If the translation seems sufficient, and the English too difficult, then just read that.

Yeah, because all that scholarship makes up for the fact that Joyce wrote it in English (highly complex and idiosyncratic English at that) and not in German. Moron.

If your English is good enough then you certainly should read it in the original. It will be hard, but it's worth it.

Gee thanks Goethe.

Also a non anglo. I read LotR on the original. It was as arduous an expierence as crawling trough the cracks of orodruin; but i wouldn't change it for anything. You should go for the original

Get Ulysses Annotated along it and only use it whenever you feel lost. Language isn't that hard, it's huge number of references that pose a problem. You may need to force yourself through first Dedalus chapter, after that it's surprisingly smooth. Well, except that hospital chapter, that one is nightmare. It felt like just hit a wall when I got there. I'm not English, btw.

Moron? Gee. You read Proust in French? Tolstoy in Russian? Cervantes in Spanish? Goethe auf Deutsch? The suggestion was merely that German scholarship would allow nothing less than mediocre pass. If German's your native language then, why not? Otherwise, I appreciate your passion. All in all, it's good for lit.

Joyce knew 14 languages including being fluent in German and chose to write it in English

The first volume of Proust, yes. Unfortunately, my Spanish isn't good enough to read Cervantes, and my German and Russian are non-existent. But that's not the point: I know that reading Anna Karenina in translation is not the same as reading Anna Karenina, only a blurred reflection of it. No translation can ever be pure enough.

German being German. In my language Ulysses isn't translated. Not because it would be a bad sell. Things like that sell like cakes for required reading school stuffs. It's simply because it's deemed that by translating it you would loose too much. It's a unique work, Joyce goes through the evolution of his language through it, and all that is lost in translation, so seeing someone advocate translation of this work is simply baffling.

Read with a guide book and a dictionary. It will be hard and frustrating, but it will bost immensely your vocabulary and your dominion on the English language.
I haven't actually read it, but this is what happened with me when I read Naturalis Historiae by Pliny.

Read some Victorian era books first
Like Dracula

I can't even imagine what Ulysses is like in other languages. I'd definitely say the second option. Ulysses would've been impossible for me without pic related, but then again I might just be a brainlet.

Yeah, it seems to me in a book where linguistic virtuosity/the English language itself is so important, it would take a genius at least dedicated as Joyce to translate it to another language and not lose a lot of nuance and meaning. Sucks for people who don't know English, but then again, there'd definitely a lot of beautiful works solely-English-speakers are missing out on, so it balances out in the end I think.

Well, yeah, but a. English was nonetheless his native language, and b. while Joyce was Joyce, we are wee, linguistically.

Again, I don't know, but okay. That said, German scholars have been the patricians of Joyce nuance-hunting, which makes German the most likely language (English is A Germanic Language, after all) to receive an adequate translation. Case in point: I thoroughly enjoyed my Englished copy of Bely's Petersburg. You might not think that a fair (imaginary) comparison, but most literary Russians would disagree with you.

Case in point: Eugene Onegin-- 2 were unreadable, and Nabokov's thing, aside from the notes, a let down. Lately, however, I happened upon the Wordsworth Classic edition, which, though a little stilted, was really quite enjoyable.

>tfw not Anglo, I read the first chapter of it in the original, I understand everything but I feel nothing

What's wrong with me?