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We've got an English language book (discussion) group here in our French newcomers' group - and it has been a real education for me! Most of our participants are non-native English speakers. Some of them stick to reading books in their original language, but particularly for popular novels, we sometimes get lazy and read them in translation.
What's interesting (to me, at least, since I make up the book list each time we meet) is which books have and haven't been translated, and which other languages a book originally written in French, English, German, Spanish, etc. has been translated into.
One of our members, who claims she "never reads" brought in a two volume publication she had read in her (native) French about the wives of all the famous dictators. When I went to put it on our list, I found the book had been translated into nearly every European language, except English! I may actually get inspired to read this one in the original French, cause it sounded really interesting. (Never realized there was a Mrs. Castro, nor a Mrs Pol Pot - you just don't think about those sorts of things.)
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