So, I think I might have a tentative plan to try committing myself to just 6 unread French-translated purchased books as my challenge (I'm keeping the number low so that it won't seem so unattainable if Real Life stuff cuts into my reading time again and I technically get 2 months completion time per title, just in case). I thought about trying to do a tandem challenge where I read the translation and the original (or otherwise English-language version where applicable and/or available), but that seemed too prone to complication.
3 titles I've previously read in the originals, where I'm familiar with the story:
- Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, translated by Patrick Couton as Le Pčre Porcher will obviously be the 1st pick (if I can find where I left it) as my usual holiday read, which I'll try doing this time around in French (and Couton is an excellent translator who fully deserves all the awards he's gotten for doing the Discworld series).
- Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives in his Laundry Files series, translated by Bernard Sigaud as Le bureau des atrocités is likely to be the 2nd candidate, as I'm in the middle of a read of the latest installment, and there will be a new one out next summer. So this time around I'll try doing the periodic series re-read in French (and I'm pretty impressed that they translated the full novel, the bonus novella, Stross' additional essay, and the list of espionage-related acronyms, rather than omitting the extras and appendices like sometimes happens).
- Haven't decided yet, but likely to be another old favourite I haven't touched the translation of yet. Tanya Huff, Barry Hughart, and Lois McMaster Bujold certainly are candidates, though I may go with a short story collection for variety instead of a full novel and dip into Robert Silverberg's Roma Aeterna or Ted Chiang's La Tour de Babylone or Lucius Shepard's Le dragon Griaule, which I finally have the English e-book of, or Tanya Huff again with Nouvelles Sanglantes.
3 titles I haven't previously read at all (easier to pick, actually):
- Finnish author Leena Lehtolainen's Henkivartija/Le Lynx, 1st in her Bodyguard series which is also being translated by AmazonCrossing into English, alongside her Maria Kallio series I've been reading and enjoying, but which I probably won't see discounted to my usual pick-it-up-on-sale price for some time.
- Richard Matheson's I am Legend/Je suis une légende. I do kind of know the story from having heard part of a BBC Radio reading which I never finished listening to, and in a vague way from having seen the Will Smith movie after having part-listened to the BBC's version, but I've never actually read it.
- Icelandic author Árni Thórarinsson's Dauđi trúđsins/Le dresseur d'insectes, which will have to be a new purchase (
for a price-drop/sale). As mentioned in the What were your favourite books of 2014 thread, he was an AmazonCrossing discovery for whom I said I'd like to see another book with the reporter amateur sleuth.
It turns out that there are at least 8 books in the series, AmazonCrossing only translated the 4th (to be fair, apparently it was the award-winning one of the lot, and the story did standalone), and since they did it way back in 2012 and haven't done any more as they have for their other Nordic crime series released around the same time, I'm going to assume that it didn't sell well enough/garner enough critical attention to justify further translations.
So if I actually want to read the rest of the series at all, I'm going to have to do it in French. (At least for #4-8, which seem to be all that Points/Seuil have done; if I want to read #1-3, it looks like I'd have to drastically upgrade my severely limited Icelandic and then find a source of ebooks for them that are accessible from Canada, if they even exist, since apparently the 1st one dates back to 1998.)
I have to say that I'm kind of looking forward to trying this. Being reasonably fluent in another language or few dramatically expands my available circle of reading choices in certain areas of interest, it seems.
It's kind of like what Charlemagne was said to have said: "Knowing another language is like possessing another soul." And that's the sort of thing one could always use a few more spares of to like, keep around for trading purposes and stuff.
