Hi, here are my 2 cents...
I'm from Germany, and I love to read fantasy and scifi, where many works are written by anglophone authors. Though many of them come translated, there are a few downers:
- Translations often come much later (quite excruciating when a beloved series is continued after years of waiting...)
- The original books will often be split up in several tomes
- A single German tome will often cost more than the English original
- Some books of a favourite author might not be translated at all
- Translations may lose some of the original linguistic "flavour" (for example the "Britishness" someone mentioned above, e.g. of the Harry Potter books)
Years ago, I decided to begin reading the english version of many books, dictionary close at hand. Since looking up the words can be quite tiresome and cumbersome, I tried out an electronic translator quite some time ago. I was pretty disappointed by its scope, and quickly returned to the unwieldy paper version.
Now that's where ebooks come into play. I took the plunge in the end of 2011, buying my first reader (Sony PRS-T1). I couldn't be happier since then, I am still amazed by the scope of the built-in dictionary (Oxford), it will rarely fail me when looking up unknown words. Just being able to touch them and to immediately see their translation is a bit like a dream come true. But I think I wouldn't have got into ereading if it weren't for the dictionary functionality, since I find the DRM to be quite restrictive.