Does Translation versus Original Work matter with a genre?

[jeff_lindqvist]

Languages with the biggest portion of "original work" are Swedish and then English. In many other languages (which I might just listen to), I base my selection on so-called free and legal content, e.g. Gutenberg, Loyalbooks, Librivox and the likes, and there, it's hard to avoid classics... I mean, the authors whose books I've listened to in Spanish this year are Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson and H. G. Wells.

[lichtrausch]

My first preference is original version, for obvious reasons. Then the version of a closely related language, so for example I would rather read a Dutch work in German translation rather than Japanese translation. The German translator simply has a much easier job in that case so it's a good bet he will produce a better translation than the Japanese translator, although I'm sure there are exceptions. After that my main consideration is just getting in enough reading practice for each of my languages. So I'd rather read a work translated from Greek or Turkish or Finnish in some other language than English.

[Iversen]

Translations of poetry will almost automatically amount to rewritings if the result has to keep metre and have rhymes etc. This will mean that the elements have to be moved around and sometimes replpaced, and to my mind that's a totally inadmissible procedure. However against expectation I have seen at least one example that surprised me in a positive way, namely a translation of Valéry's Cimétière Marin (illustrated below) into Norwegian which I saw during my French studies in the 70s. Unfortunately I haven't seen it since..

Kunst047.JPG

Prose can (and should) be more loyal to the original, but transferring anything to another language changes the aspect of the whole thing. These days I mainly read non-fiction, but If I still consumed prose literature for its own sake then I would for principal reasons prefer to stick to the originals BUT..... right now I'm using fragments of two of the Potter books as study texts in Irish and Latin, and my feeble justification for this is that the Potter books are translated more loyally then most, and also that I need to have something that differs from my usual fare of WIkipedia articles and other non-fiction from the internet to cover those languages.

By the way, as a student I translated the whole of Gaspard de la Nuit by Aloysius Bertrand (illustrated below) from French into Danish, so I do know how hard it can be to preserve the original mood and 'sound' of an original work. Gaspard is a collection of prose poems (with an introduction) so it's already halfway into poetry, which means that you have to be more strict about the language you use - it's not enough to preserve the meaning. With non-fiction preserving the exact meaning is usually enough.

Kunst017 - Gaspard de la Nuit.JPG

[gsbod]

I don't really have strong feelings either way. I do wonder why you would be making an effort to learn to read a language if there's nothing written in it you'd actually want to read, although I will accept that if you need a language for other reasons and prefer to learn by reading, translated works are a reasonable option if decent translations are available.

I do think there is some merit, if you are at the bridging stage between learner and native materials, in reading something you are familiar with, which would mean either something you've already read in translation, or a translation of something you'd already read in another language. I guess this is why some learners collect different translations of Le petit prince or Harry Potter.

And finally, I think if there is something you want to read and you're going to have to read it in translation anyway, it doesn't matter so much which language you read it in. This is why, although the majority of German books I read are originals, I have read Stieg Larsson and Cixin Liu in German translation.

[Lisa]

Abstractly, I agree it's much better to be reading in an original-language rather than a translated work. But a translation of a book I know and like... the content is comfortable, and it makes it much easier for me to read for understanding. And then, my language interests don't intersect with my national literature tastes...

[rdearman]

My first preference is original version, for obvious reasons.

I believe the OP is asking for the obvious reasons, because they are not obvious. So what are these obvious reasons?

[lichtrausch]

My first preference is original version, for obvious reasons.

I believe the OP is asking for the obvious reasons, because they are not obvious. So what are these obvious reasons?

I think I might have been answering a slightly different question than the OP. In the spirit of the OP, I prefer original works because they tend to better reflect how the language is generally used. Translators are forced to make compromises between faithfulness and readability. The author of the original is free. Also extra-linguistic factors which others have mentioned.

[Iversen]

I believe the OP is asking for the obvious reasons, because they are not obvious. So what are these obvious reasons?

The most obvious reason would be that a translation isn't as linguistically pure as the original (whether written or spoken). And in these days there are translations (not least those made by Google translate) that support that view - but by and large humanmade translations of books and articles aren't so bad that a learner couldn't use them. OK, linguistics and philologists may point out passages that are too close to the original (like when the Wulfila bible is suspected to reflect Greek patterns to the extent that it doesn't represent the actual language of the Goths), but this is a minor problem for a beginner. The opposite problem is that a 'pretty' translation may betray the characteristics of the original, like place names and names of institutions that are replaced with names belong to the cultural sphere of the target language.

The major problem is that you should also learn something about the culture that produced the original in the original language, and if all you read in a target language is translations from English (or some other language) then you miss that opportunity.

[tractor]

By "within a genre", I mean for example, popular non-fiction (aimed at general audiences), or novels, or academic works, etc.

I'm hoping people will expand their answer to this simple poll.

Does it matter to you if a work was originally written in your Target Language or not?

Well, the original is the original. That's how the author wrote it and that's how he or she intended it to be read. Something is almost always lost, or added, in translation. However, that doesn't mean that I don't read translated works.

Are translated works easier?

If the work is translated from one of my weaker languages into one of my stronger languages, the obvious answer is yes.

But, are translated works easier per se? Is a text translated from English into Italian easier than a text written originally in Italian? I don't know. Possibly, but it probably depends on both the author and the translator. Some people don't write very clearly.

Do you have a strategy as to when to add non-translated works in your language learning journey?

I try to add short texts early on, like Wikipedia articles and news paper articles, but novels and other long works have to wait until I can read more comfortably, without having to look up words all the time.

[Crojo]

I mainly read translations into Spanish, my TL.

My preference would be to read original works, but there's a problem: I cannot find anything that I can understand and which is enjoyable. I have a bookcase full of original Spanish novels and non-fiction and I cannot get into any of them. Two 'big' authors on my list are Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but these two seem to write pages and pages of description. I'll read on paragraph and understand everything. Then the next will be a list of all the unusual things in a room, which I would have to look up. So they become quite boring quite quickly. That should change as my vocabulary grows. I will get to them eventually.

As for non-fiction, it's easier to read translations of familiar books than translations of unfamiliar books. And it's easier to read the latter over original Spanish non-fiction. All the books I've tried have been on familiar topics; so it's not the subject matter that's difficult. The problem here seems to be political. I get completely thrown when Spanish authors write from a position of 'this is the accepted view and common sense' if that view is, in fact, objectionable and not common sense. When this happens, it makes me think I've missed something – how could they say something so outrageous unless they've previously made a strong argument on that point. But no; it's just something the writer believes and which they think the author will accept without question.

Reading Spanish texts in the original is one reason why I started to learn the language. It's not the main reason, which is to speak Spanish. I'm hoping that when I am proficient enough to speak fluently, I will be able to pick up and enjoy original works.

Translations of fiction still have to be the right kind of book. I initially thought that translations were easier to read because they were translations, but that is not the case. I started a few translations that were far too Anglo. It's quite jarring (and difficult to stay in the target language) when reading a translation of a book set in, say, NY. I would hate to read a translation of a Stephen King novel, for example, because they are so aggressively American that they're half-in-English even in translation. So now I just read translations of books that I enjoyed in English.

Historical fiction and fantasy seem to be okay, because they're not set in any familiar place. Saying that, Harry Potter was gibberish when I tried to read it, but that could be because they're poor books even in English. Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom novels were okay up to number four. The fourth one was by a different translator to the third and I couldn't understand a word.

Now, I'm about a quarter of the way through the first book in Jonathan Stroud's 'Bartimaeus Sequence' and it's going well. I'd rather be reading (adult, originally in Spanish) books that I've never read, but if this is what makes sense, I don't have much choice.

One thing that's helped – over and above the advantage gained from reading familiar books – is something BeaP wrote about (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17392&p=206639&hilit=slow#p206639), reading slowly. I used to think that 'extensive reading' meant reading quickly, and that slowing down made it 'intensive reading'. Now I think this is an unhelpful dichotomy. Reading more slowly (not looking everything up, but reading over sentences until the meaning clicks – which, incidentally, is how I read in English) is far more enjoyable than reading quickly. Maybe this is where I was going wrong with the original works, not taking the time to fully understand and enjoy them.