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Listing translated books by CEFR level | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Book | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7190 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 9 of 16 05 March 2014 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I guess we are both logged in at the same time. I was going to say... Pardon me if I've missed something and you really mean there are German translations that are at A2/B1 level. I can believe that. There are translations of some classic books such as The Iliad which only use the 500 most frequent words in English. Thanks for clarifying. That's very helpful. Translations often seem easier than native materials. Edited by luke on 05 March 2014 at 2:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5360 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 10 of 16 05 March 2014 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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How does someone determine the level of books? For example, I'd like to read novels by the following authors translated into Spanish and I'd like to start with the easiest.
John Grisham Ken Follett Stephen King Tom Clancy Ayn Rand Dan Brown Is there an easy way to determine how easy/hard these would be before buying them and just trying them out? If anyone has experience reading these authors I'd appreciate knowing the approximate level of their novels. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4787 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 11 of 16 06 March 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the additions, guys. I've updated the list:
A1 Beginner The Cat in the Hat - Dr Seuss (English original) Green Eggs and Ham - Dr Seuss (English original) A2 Elementary Asterix Series- (French original) Tintin Series- Herge (French original) B1 Low Intermediate Earth's Children (6 lengthy books) - Jean M. Auel (English original) Harry Potter Series- JK Rowling (English original) Le petit prince (French original) Micky, Donald etc paperbacks- Disney (English Original) The Hobbit - J.R.R Tolkien (English original) B2 High Intermediate Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien (English original) Sherlock Holmes Series (English original) C1 Advanced A Song of Ice and Fire (5 lengthy books so far) - G.R.R. Martin (English original) I haven't gone into the levels of the books into detail such as content words etc. Indeed, I believe that the CEFR is more about your ability to communicate with others and there aren't any word lists. So I'm using the idea fast and loose. I've used suggestions of the cefr level for the book in English. These are just the full adult versions. Not abridged, or adult readers. Not perfect, but a pointer until someone whose read a particular book can advise otherwise. James29- I've had a look for you. I only found: John Grisham C1 ref: Learn English in Dublin Again, if anyone has any experience of any of these books or others and wishes to pitch in with their opinion, be my guest! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6582 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 16 06 March 2014 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Are you sure ASOIAF is harder than LOTR? Why?
I've read only some pages in Italian but it didn't seem any more difficult. And the quotes in English sound very modern. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4506 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 13 of 16 07 March 2014 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It depends ... as I said, you can read it at a B2 level (I did so in Danish), the same level I proposed for LOTR. It's nevertheless harder if we only take vocabulary into account, because GRR Martin uses lots of not very well known vocabulary (even to native English speakers), things you usually look up on wikipedia rather than a dictionary though, ie. sorts of tools, weapons, interior, buildings, tapestry, food, wine, etc. But one can certainly live with that on a B2 level, just look up the interesting stuff, leave the rest fuzzy. What's more important are the subtleties, all the foreshadowing, minor details that can play a role 1000-2000 pages further on. You really have to pay a lot of attention if you want to get the most out of it, in terms of content/enjoyment I mean. You actually should read it at least 2 times in English - even if you are a native speaker or advanced reader of it, because you certainly missed some "important" parts during the first read - they just seem so unimportant at first. Only later, after some vague reference, you'll realize that you should reread this and that chapter because you haven't paid enough attention to some details the first round. This is what makes ASOIAF so attractive to read, but also what makes it harder than LOTR. You have to think, you have to combine, you gotta get the details - and you need to be quite advanced to catch them all. edit: there are some famous (chaptered) ASOIAF re-read blogs out in the web. When you have read some of the books, do yourself a favour and read them, this gives some nice WTF moments and triggers an instant urge to read those chapters again. edit2: a fitting quote from http://hbowatch.com/why-not-to-read-a-song-of-ice-and-fire/
Edited by daegga on 07 March 2014 at 12:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elanguest Newbie Malta elanguest.com Joined 3851 days ago 19 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* | Message 14 of 16 12 May 2014 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Translations are not always at the same level, or the same quality, as the originals. I get a lot of questions from
English learners about Harry Potter because the sentences are not well thought-out and can often contain ambiguous meaning. Obviously, when these books were translated into other languages, those ambiguities would have had to be thought out and amended to make sense in the target language. It can, and probably more often does, go in the other direction: books that may be very well written in their original language can lose a lot in translation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4518 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 15 of 16 12 May 2014 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think it's quite hard to be very precise with this rankings compared to CEFR levels. Perhaps it would be better simply to list books at Beginner (A1/A2), Intermediate (B1/B2) and Advanced (C1/C2).
Harry Potter is good for B1. I felt there was a definite jump in language around book 4. The Percy Jackson series is easier, but still B1. The Hunger Games series is harder than HP or PJ, but still quite readable. The Huraki Murakami is B2 - he's actually a pretty good easy read. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mercutio Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3828 days ago 19 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 16 11 June 2014 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am also interested in these CEFR levels for translated books. I am around A1 level and
struggle to find good stuff for me in Spanish. I have considered "calvin and hobbes" cartoon strips and maybe 300 graphic novel by frank millar but I think the frank millar one would be quite hard 1 person has voted this message useful |
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