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Multilingual Fiction | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Emerald Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom languagedabbler.blog Joined 6236 days ago 316 posts - 340 votes  Speaks: Hindi, Gujarati*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 9 02 November 2008 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lots of people on this forum, including myself, find reading books in target language a good practice for further improvement in language and simply for pleasure.
I especially prefer enjoyable fiction while I am a beginner because good stories make the process little less frustrating. I also find that using the books I know and love in English works well. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are two of the best examples of good fiction that has been published in many languages. I have got Harry Potter book in English, German, Italian and Latin. I think multilingual books could be particularly useful for people who want to learn many languages. What are some of the good books you know that have been published in many different languages? Besides Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings I have found: Emma, Jane Austen (German, Italian) Persuasion, Jane Austen (Italian) Hobbit (Italian) Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (Esperanto) The Time Machine, H. G. Wells (Esperanto) Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Dafoe (Esperanto) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6430 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 9 02 November 2008 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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First, a note: there are many, many fiction books that have been translated into quite a lot of languages - ranging from pop fiction to prize-winning works. Also, almost any book you've heard of that wasn't written originally in the language you hear about it in is probably available in translation.
The mainstay of my studies has been "The Master and Margherita", which is available in English, Russian (the original), Polish, Italian, Esperanto, etc, etc. A lot of classical Russian literature has been widely translated. For English authors, I quite like Ursula K. Le Guin, although she loses some of her magic in translation - or at least, into the Russian/Italian translations I've seen. Jules Verne has been extremely widely translated from French. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been very widely translated from Spanish. In all honesty, I think this is an area where there's real abundance, and picking a book you like is likely to lead to a pleasant surprise if you look for translations. If you do need names or numbers, though, Unesco's "Index Translationum" has plenty of top-50 lists - by country, author, base language, target language. Edit: I somehow mixed up historical scifi writers, above; thanks to the forum member who pointed that out to me. Edited by Volte on 03 November 2008 at 2:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6427 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 03 November 2008 at 8:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Try Shakespeare in German :)
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| Emerald Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom languagedabbler.blog Joined 6236 days ago 316 posts - 340 votes Speaks: Hindi, Gujarati*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 9 03 November 2008 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
perhaps one day :P I have got Shakespeare in Esperanto though...let's see how that goes before I dare German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maya_star17 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5906 days ago 269 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 9 03 November 2008 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have Harry Potter books in English (British version), Russian, French, Spanish, and Japanese. I know the English version of the series off by heart, so it's a great way for me to learn other languages.
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6461 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 9 04 November 2008 at 3:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Jane Austen books, particularly Pride and Prejudice, were translated into lots of languages in time for the big movie hit. However, I'm not sure how suitable they are for language-learning as the language is at times outdated.
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