The Untranslated -- Language learning to read untranslated literature

[galaxyrocker]

It's a blog by someone who is learning languages to read untranslated research. Here's his 5-year post where he discusses why he does it. Figured it'd be interesting to several people here; I certainly found it interesting, and was sure some of y'all can relate! I posted it in my log, but felt it would generate more discussion/interest here.

[Sandía]

That you for posting this, I enjoyed exploring this blog and the blog the author links to in the post. I would love to learn several more languages simply to enjoy the literature, so I relate quite a bit to the post when he speaks about his motivations for learning languages. It is nice to see people who have learned to read literature in several languages, as it can be quite demotivating to see how far I still have to go in my first second language before I am completely comfortable with the literature.

[Dragon27]

This reminds me of the Russian mathematician who learned French just for the sake of reading a single book by Alexander Grothendieck.

Probably not a single one, at least the whole EGA/SGA/FGA trilogy (and his other works). Or did you mean, that there was only one untranslated book? And I must say that Grothendieck's writings is one hell of a motivation to learn French for a mathematician (I assume it was Vladimir Voevodsky).

[IronMike]

Rebooting this thread because I've just gone back to The Untranslated to re-read his method and some of his reviews. Wonderful. I may try his method with Italian after the summer.

[galaxyrocker]

Here's a link to The Modern Novel, which I also have bookmarked, along with The Untranslated. It's a good list for authors in different countries as well, which could help give some reading material.

[Cavesa]

An awesome blog, thanks!

A lot of good tips and I definitely love the spirit of learning a few languages to read, rather then simply pretend that everything not translated doesn't exist.

I have had an opportunity to get acquainted with the so-called online polyglot community, and came to the conclusion that although there are a lot of people who can read in multiple languages different translations of The Little Prince and the Harry Potter series or some popular science articles swamped with cognates, very few can boast of the ability to read fluently sophisticated literary fiction in more than five languages.

Well, this is the only tricky bit, I'd say. How many people actually read the highest and most sophisticated literary fiction even in one language? While it is a great achievement, to read the high literature in several languages, I think there is no need to look down upon reading the low literature (it is not just Harry Potter after all), or technical and scientific works. Actually, this "high literature is the only thing that matters" is actually one of the language teachers' mistakes, that discourages people from reading in general.

Also, the author is clearly in favour of intensive reading, not extensive. And I find it remarkable, and it goes well together with his job, education, and general reading style. Scholars simply read even their native language like that. That's one of the reasons why I hated the literature classes btw, not my cup of tea at all.

I love a lot about this blog, but it simply needs to be taken with a grain of salt like everything else. I hope I'll find someone blogging about reading scientific works in several languages. And history works, that might be the most fascinating field of them all, as far as differences between the works in various languages go!

[Ezra]

Rebooting this thread because I've just gone back to The Untranslated to re-read his method and some of his reviews. Wonderful. I may try his method with Italian after the summer.

Thanks! I was searching this thread to find a link to the blog but could not remember its title .

[Sahmilat]

Well, this is the only tricky bit, I'd say. How many people actually read the highest and most sophisticated literary fiction even in one language? While it is a great achievement, to read the high literature in several languages, I think there is no need to look down upon reading the low literature (it is not just Harry Potter after all), or technical and scientific works. Actually, this "high literature is the only thing that matters" is actually one of the language teachers' mistakes, that discourages people from reading in general.

This is a hard mindset for me to break out of. I've always been a bit of a literature snob at heart and I always want to read the most fanciest, highfalutin literature I can find, whether in English or one of my target languages (I just downloaded a 7000 page .mobi of selected works by Stefan Zweig). The language that I have seen this problem with the most is in Latin (and, I suppose, Ancient Greek). There's such a focus on getting students to read, however slowly and painfully, the "canonical" authors of western classicism that they never really learn to read pleasantly. There's tons of easy Latin to be read, some ancient, much of it medieval, and even some written in the last century for the express purpose of helping students read more easily, but these are almost never taken advantage of in classrooms, whether because of the curriculum high school teachers have to stick to or because of the snobbery of classics departments at universities that look down on anything that isn't from the Augustan age. This is, I think, a really important insight and an significant problem in the teaching especially of ancient languages, but it certainly applies to modern languages as well.

[David1917]

I hope I'll find someone blogging about reading scientific works in several languages. And history works, that might be the most fascinating field of them all, as far as differences between the works in various languages go!

Check out Iversen's log

[lichtrausch]

His latest post is a review of the literary science fiction novel Graduate School (Aspirantūra) by Margarita Perveņecka, currently only accessible to readers of Latvian.