Do you read books in more than one language?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ficbot

with a novel translation, I feel they would not take such liberties, so reading it in English vs in French, I would have pretty much the same experience...

You may be surprised; sometimes a "translator" all but rewrites a book.

A classic example is the Jules Verne 1864 classic "Voyage au centre de la Terre", generally translated as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". The most common English "translation" of this, and the one that you'll very likely still get if you buy an English edition of the book in any book shop, is the 1871 translation by Griffith and Farran. It's undoubtedly a good book, but it's not the book that Verne wrote. The plot outline is the same, but all the details are different - the "translators" have taken Verne's plot and written their own book.

If you want to compare the two, I've posted the Griffith and Farran translation to MR under the title "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", and an accurate 1877 translation by Malleson under the title "Journey to the Interior of the Earth". If you read the two, you'll find that they are two different books.

[Mike_73]

For leisure and magazines I read english. I find the magazines less bloated with useless information. So I get a brief overview over a new product for example, and if I want to know more, I go online. I read German more or less only for work (standards and such). I think this has to do with my stay in the US. After approx. 1 year, my brain started to think in english instead of German and then translating. I found this kind of funny and got stuck. Also I'm thinking about getting a greencard as I really liked it sooo much in the US. I must say I felt more at home there as in Germany.

[bspline]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A classic example is the Jules Verne 1864 classic "Voyage au centre de la Terre", generally translated as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". The most common English "translation" of this, and the one that you'll very likely still get if you buy an English edition of the book in any book shop, is the 1871 translation by Griffith and Farran. It's undoubtedly a good book, but it's not the book that Verne wrote. The plot outline is the same, but all the details are different - the "translators" have taken Verne's plot and written their own book.

Very interesting, I wasn't aware of that. I'll try the accurate one, and see how it compares.
Being Brazilian, I tend to read in English (whaaa?), just because for a long time pocket books were pretty cheap in Brazil. Also, I've read some very bad translations in here, and not from particularly complex writers (Stephen King, for one).
Of course, *if* you can read the original without a massive effort, you should. Can't see Pratchett or Piers Anthony translated without losing enormously, as they depend too much on puns and wordplay.
Another thing that happens a lot in here is the translation to portuguese of translations. Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, published not too long ago here in Brazil is a translation of the French edition.

That said, I can read in Portuguese, English, Spanish and I can figure things out in French.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Ea

I had not thought about this, but it is very good idea. Unfortunataly the foreign languages I can read books in are English and German (not good enough at French, unfortunately) - but I think it's a very sound idea.

i really find it makes a difference. unfortunately, i am frequently obliged to ignore my preference, depending on the availability of the book (then again, when i was reading only paper books and getting the majority of them from the library, i frequently read english books in the french translation, because they were not available in the original version. i guess at least in that respect i have slightly more choice now).

BTW: do you know "Le livre saphir"? Never translated into English I think, but still good fun in danish.

do you mean this one http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_de_saphir ? i've never read it, no, but the description does look good.

Originally Posted by Gaurnim

Yes, there is.
And the translation should be good, as I suppose he took extra care in translating this work. Plus he is fluent in french as he translated some of Raymond Queneau's work in italian (Exercices de style).

wow, if he can manage translating Queneau he must be really good !! i wouldn't want to try that. i will definitely look out for that article, it sounds fascinating, and i like eco very much.

[kiklop74]

I regularly read in English and Spanish apart from my native language - Serbian. English is mostly for books (fiction), while Spanish is mostly for news. However I can read most of the books in Spanish unless it is some 17 century work like Do Quixote de la Mancha.

[weatherwax]

I read English books if that is the original language and otherwise German. But I'm impressed at the many really multi-language readers here.
So this inspired me to work on my French and Spanish, luckily I can find books in those languages here as well.

[mtravellerh]

Yeah, quite astonishing how many multilingual users we have here, especially compared to the statistical data! Then again, reading is a rather uncommon pastime, these days, which might influence this positively.

[Victoria]

I read in English, but have been listening to french Radio Canada to improve my french language skills. I hadn't thought of reading in French- perhaps I'll try.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Victoria

I read in English, but have been listening to french Radio Canada to improve my french language skills. I hadn't thought of reading in French- perhaps I'll try.

Are most people in Canada bilingual, as a matter of interest, or do a majority speak only French or English, and not the other language?

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are most people in Canada bilingual, as a matter of interest, or do a majority speak only French or English, and not the other language?

I have lived in Canada for quite a long time, so this is my view: Most french Canadians get along with English quite well, although with an accent for most of them. Most englishspeaking Canadians don't do so well and lose most of the French they learned in school. If not in contact with frenchspeaking people, they don't see the need to use that language. I used to live in BC, so this might vary with the region that you live in, obviously.

[ficbot]

Most Canadians learn French in school as a required subject, but don't come out of it specially fluent unless they have a knack for languages, a French-speaking parent, an immersion program or some combination of the above reasons. I am a language teacher and I can tell you, the 'why don't they' is the cause for much study by curriculum people

[BKeeper]

Whenever possible I read books in their original language.

I read mostly in English but I have a funny background and have no problem with French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. German is (sadly) a bit harder,
(So many great/untranslatable works in German....)

Language is an amazing thing. I have found that the same person speaking a different language seems to reveal a slightly different personality.

Each language is ultimately a just different platform (cage?) from which to contemplate reality, there isn't a 100% overlap, just the hope that we mean "quasi la stessa cosa."

@HarryT: I wish I could read Latin or Greek... My Latin only got my as far as "Commentarii de Bello Gallico".

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by BKeeper

Language is an amazing thing. I have found that the same person speaking a different language seems to reveal a slightly different personality.

That's interesting. I had a professor for a French course tell me once that I had a wonderfully crisp and concise writing style (in French) and I was completely floored. I guess I don't know enough of the fancy words, so I was, by default, direct and to the point.

Verencat has seen of the kiddie writing I do in French; I teach small children and prefer to use my own materials. I would not hold that up as an 'example' of my French writing by any means because I am greatly constrained by what vocabulary is used by the curriculum I teach with (they don't use 'vous' at all, for example) and age of my audience (the level of repetition I use is fairly heavy) but certainly it is a more measured and thoughtful process than my English writing; I think about every word fairly carefully. If someone were trying to 'assess' me based on my French writing and did not know I was not a native speaker, I can't imagine what they would conclude

People have also told me that I am a linguistic anomaly. Most second language learners prefer to read than to speak (I guess because they can take their time and use a dictionary) but I prefer speaking because I can choose only the words I know My one obstacle to breaking the 'intermediate barrier' is the verb issue. I get unreasonably hung up on verb tenses when I read. It it not enough to just recognize the meaning of a verb, I have to stop and decode what tense it is in and translate it. I actually have sufficient vocabulary to read most books, but the verb tenses trip me up every time. It's why I am trying to read more in French. I want to get better at it and I want this problem to improve so I can be fully 'bilingual.'

[SplogSplog]

Foreign languages were the main reason I bought an eReader. Since retiring a couple of years back, I have become pretty heavily involved in language learning.

Pretty early on I discovered that the US Foreign Services Institute courses (used by the government to train diplomats for overseas postings) can be downloaded free of charge as PDFs.

It turns out these courses are very comprehensive (some are several volumes, each over 1000 pages long) and there was no way I could print them out, and reading them on my laptop screen gave me a headache. I bought an iRex DR1000, and put a bunch of these FSI courses on it. It has made a heck of a difference - so that I now study these courses for several hours a day.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Verencat has seen of the kiddie writing I do in French; I teach small children and prefer to use my own materials. I would not hold that up as an 'example' of my French writing by any means because I am greatly constrained by what vocabulary is used by the curriculum I teach with (they don't use 'vous' at all, for example)

That's interesting. I know that children use "tu" when talking to each other, but wouldn't it be considered rather rude for a child to use "tu" rather than "vous" when talking to an adult, or have times changed now so that's no longer the case?

It's still the case in German that you'd be committing a horrendous "social faux-pas" if you were to use "du" rather than "sie" when talking to someone that you didn't know well.