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Books worth learning a language for | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5310 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 1 of 32 26 November 2010 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the past, people occasionally asked me for German reading recommendations. I'd then google the author's name and would often find out that only some of the author's books had been translated or none at all.
For example, I like Ulrich Plenzdorf's books, but so far only one of his books has been translated into English. If your native language isn't English: is there any author that you'd really like to see translated into English so that your English speaking friends could finally read their books? Or is there any book that you enjoyed reading in the original language so much that you felt that this alone was worth studying the language? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5511 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 2 of 32 27 November 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Dead Souls, easily worth it. Or even the much shorter Overcoat. There are individual sentences in Gogol that make it worth learning Russian.
«Оставьте меня, зачем вы меня обижаете?» — и в этих проникающих словах звенели другие слова: «Я брат твой». 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 3 of 32 29 November 2010 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I would not recommend anyone to learn any particular language for one book, no matter how much this book affected me. The reason is simple: there are objective aspects of quality and subjective aspects of favour to everything. One can acknowledge the objective quality of a work and still not like it, because of some cultural or ethical background. On the other hand one can like things of low quality, maybe because of childhood memories or the like. The most I can expect when recommending a book or any piece of art, is that the other person may come to a similar conclusion with respect to its quality but he or she still may not like it. Is it worth several years of hard work when it ends in a disappointment?
But if you're already learning a language then there are certain things you should at least try. Whether you like it or not remains to be seen, but in this situation you're more likely to really gain something. Now, since everybody on this forum knows English, I would recommend not to miss Shakespeare. It takes a bit of effort to get into it, but it is not as hard as many would think. As a reward you get an almost inexhaustible source of smart, witty, surprising, or just beautiful lines, many of which are untranslatable. Here are a few from my collection: "All's Well That Ends Well": The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. "The Live And Death of King John": Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then will be to say there is no vice but beggary. "King Lear": Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest, Leave thy drink and thy whore And keep in-a-door And thou shalt have more Than two tens to a score. "Timon of Athens": Timon: What would'st thou do with the world Apemantus, if it lay in thy power? Apemantus: Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men. Timon: Would'st thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men, and remain a beast with the beasts? Apemantus: Aye, Timon. Timon: A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t'attain to. If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee. If thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when peradventure thou wert accus'd by the ass: If thou wert the ass, thy dullness would torment thee; and still thou liv'dst but as a breakfast to the wolf. If thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou should'st hazard thy life for thy dinner. Wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury. Wert thou a bear, thou would'st be kill'd by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou would'st be seaz'd by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert Germane to the lion, and the spottes of thy kindred were jurors on thy life. All thy safety were remotion, and thy defence absence. What beast could'st thou be that were not subject to a beast: and what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation. Edited by OlafP on 29 November 2010 at 2:01am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6693 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 32 29 November 2010 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have read somewhere that the English composer Delius learned Norwegian to read Ibsen, and some American scholar whose name I have forgotten learned to read Danish because of HC Andersen. However it has always struck me as strange that anybody would learn a language to access the most famous works. The real benefit is to be able to seek out the less wellknown sources, and a more congenial access to the 'big names' just comes as a bonus.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5511 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 5 of 32 29 November 2010 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Why is that? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5216 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 32 19 January 2011 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||
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@OlaP I agree with you (lots of books which value is undeniable but I simply don't like), but although poetry can indeed suffer with translations, you picked up bits that actually translate very well (not too dependent on word play and the like).
-- I'm not a real fan of poetry (some exceptions, though) or flowery literature, so most of what I like or might like is translatable or, at the very least, explainable. That's why it's probably been more or less well translated already. And of course that's what happens to the 'greatest hits' of every writer: they soon get translated and are readily available without the language barrier. Unless the translations are horrible you are not missing out on anything. Obviously This might not apply to your particular niche of taste. So, I don't think I'd learn any language just because of one book that I don't know yet. Especially if it's available in a language I can read. However, I'm a big fan of SF and there's this short minor French saga I love, of which I read the first two stories (in translation) and only recently got to know there was a third one... I might try and see how transparent French is for me, and if I can't read the book, and if I eventually become either very rich or very bored or both, I'll pay a translator or learn French because I'm so intrigued about how the story continues. And if I don't like it, I still get the possibility to re-read Verne in the original whenever I want to. Then again, I could find out if maybe it was translated to something I speak better in the first place ;) Of course, I'm not learning German just to read those, but since I have to read something to build on my German, I'll begin the Perry Rhodan series ASAP. It's that, or some well-known krimi or war stories series. I'll be reading good translations of good books I've already read (and come to think of it, some originals as well) too. Same goes for Russian. If I read something new, it has to come with some kind of recommendation, or known to be of potential interest. If it's just to build on my skills I tend to stick to re-reading/watching things I liked in the past, only in a new language. Edit: in short, I think good stories are mostly language-independent :) Edited by mrwarper on 19 January 2011 at 1:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5471 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 32 19 January 2011 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, it should be more than one book. Or it should just be a nice plus to learning the language. By the
way Gusutafu, that quote in Russian is making me print it out and post it on my wall. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 32 19 January 2011 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Pablo Neruda- "Canto general" and "España en el corazón". Well, pretty much anything by Neruda is worth the effort to learn Spanish, along with "El amor en los tiempos del cólera" (Love in the Time of Cholera) and "Cién años de soledad" (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gabriel García Márquez.
Both Neruda and "Gabo" speak to and touch the soul. When I read "Neruda's poem "Explico algunas cosas", "I'm Explaining a Few Things", I am deeply moved and reminded of why war is something to be avoided whenever possible. Reading "Love in the Time of Cholera" I am transported to Colombia, its land, its culture, its people- its soul. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" makes me wish that Macondo was my hometown. Gabo on Pablo Neruda: "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language!" If you only learn Spanish just to be able to read Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez in the original, most definitely, in my opinion, "vale la pena"- it's worth it to learn Spanish. Yes, they're available in English and other languages but so much of the "music" and rhythm is lost in translation. Well, at least that's my opinion. Edited by iguanamon on 19 January 2011 at 4:11am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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