[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by Renate

Translation is such a quagmire.
I sometimes wonder if it's better to read language X in my non-native language Y or in English.
Is the similarity of X and Y sufficient to overcome the fact that Y is not native to me?
Or should I do it just for practice?

Originally Posted by rkomar

And yet they say that publishers are replacing translators with AI to save money and time. A good translation takes much skill and artistry, so I despair about this trend.

As a native French speaker who’s also relatively comfortable with English, my rule of thumb has always been to read foreign books (i.e. whose primary language is neither French nor English) in French, and English language authors in English. For the odd cases where I can’t find a French translation of a foreign book, but where an English translation exists, I’ll fall back to English.

I guess my main reason for sticking to French for non-English books is that I read much faster in French, and well at the end of the day it’s my mother tongue, it will always be more comfortable.

Also a quite interesting fact is that each language has their translation culture of sorts; French translators for instance tend to focus more on the fluidity of the text, making sure that the text reads as if it were written by a Frenchman, using French sentence structures and expressions. German translators tend to stick more closely to the original text, which can result in a translation that feels more contrived but perhaps retains a bit more of the essence of the original text.

All in all translation truly is a fascinating and important aspect of literature. I really hope translations don’t end up being completely outsourced to AI in the future!