Should I read things Translated into French?

[Elenia]

I grew up reading only native-written Chinese (my L1). Recently, I read parts of a few novels translated into Chinese, and boy, were they horrible. I felt I was learning Chinese all over again just like you said you were French. Not that they're incorrect, but they feel really foreign. You can grab a few books translated into your mother tongue and see for yourself.

This does depend on a number of factors. Some translators like to highlight the 'foreigness' of the text, others like to hide it. Being faithful to the original can mean different things to different people, and result in very different translations.

The translation that stands out in my mind as being the most horrible one I have experienced was a translation from Russian into English of 'Night Watch' by Sergei Lukyanenko, due mostly to poor editing and some awful translation choices. But other than that, I can only really recall enjoyable translations into English. Recent highlights have been 'Oliver VII' - published by a company which specialises in translated literature - and Michael King's translation of 'The Cyberiad' by Stanislaw Lem. The latter is notable because Lem has apparently been a victim of poor translations previously, which negatively affected his reception in anglophone countries.

My point here is that a translation doesn't have to be bad, or to read unnaturally, although some are awful. A lot of the quality depends on the quality of the translator, their aims with their translation and the goals of the publisher - the same can be said of any book on that count. A good indication on whether a translation is worth your time is checking how popular it is with native speakers, and reading their reviews to see if they mention any clunkiness or unnaturalness in the language. Also, be aware that blockbusters and page turners may be popular in translation due to their plot rather than the quality of the writing - just as they often are in the original.

[kanewai]

I was going to jump in and post that reading works translated into French are absolutely, without a doubt, easier than reading native materials ... and then I realized that there might be based on the types of books I read in translation. For English>French I read sci-fi, or Harry Potter, or fantasy ... fun & mostly linear novels. I haven't tried to read Faulkner or David Foster Wallace or Dostoevsky in French. And I don't think I want to!

For the reverse, I've seen English translations of French classics that are actually harder to read than the original - so much depends on the skills of the translator.

Here's a nice quote from Edith Grossman, from an interview in the Guardian on the art of translation:

I often think of translation as an aural/oral practice. You have to be able to hear the language of the original. You have to be able to hear the tonalities, what the language indicates about the intelligence or class of the speaker. You have to be able to hear that, in my case in Spanish. And then you have to be able to speak it in English. You know, some idiot asked Gregory Rabassa, García Márquez’s first translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude, if he knew enough Spanish to do it. And Gregory said: “You asked me the wrong question. The real question is, do I know enough English?”

[reineke]

The Great Fiction/Nonfiction Debate
Stephen Krashen

"There is strong pressure for American schools to de-emphasize fiction and focus more on nonfiction, because of the belief that nonfiction provides more "academic" language. But studies suggest that fiction may be the bridge between everyday conversational language and academic language."

Krashen mentions an interesting study:

Sullivan and Brown (2014)...found that the amount of reading done at age 42 is a clear predictor of vocabulary test scores among native speakers of English in the UK, controlling for reading done earlier in life. They also reported that the reported frequency of reading high quality fiction was a very strong predictor of vocabulary knowledge, and reading "middle brow" fiction was also a good predictor, slightly stronger, in fact, than reading nonfiction."

http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/2015_the_great_fiction_nonfiction_debate_krashen_.pdf

The actual study:

Vocabulary from adolescence to middle age

"The frequency of reading for pleasure was positively linked to progress in vocabulary....

- What people read mattered as much as how often they read, with the greatest gains for readers of high-brow fiction.
- Readers of broadsheets made more progress in vocabulary than people who didn’t read newspapers, while tabloid readers actually made less progress than non-readers of newspapers."

"Those who read high-brow fiction made greater vocabulary gains than those who read middle-brow fiction; and low-brow fiction readers made no more progress than non-readers. The gains linked to reading factual books were smaller than those for fiction, and similarly, low-brow factual reading was not linked to any vocabulary gain."

https://www.researchonline.org.uk/sds/search/taxonomy.do%3Bjsessionid=B80A1A878C395F45201883642DA03FE0?action=document&ref=B40070&taxonomy=BSK

[reineke]

A note, lest someone should be tempted to burden his brow with Dante's Purgatorio and similar works. I think that the results of the above-mentioned study indicate that translations of American pulp, telenovelas and cartoons are great sources of indispensable language and that basic, native-like vocabulary is an attainable goal. Stephen King"s novels are God's gift to language learners.

[issemiyaki]

Wow, this was such a rich debate. Thank you to all who participated.

I think the takeaway is to read like a native French speaker, and to not pay attention to whether something is translated or not.

However, I am preparing to take a very challenging French class, and it is imperative for me to "up my game" when it comes to politics and culturally-deep French.

For example, we'll be studying political speeches from people like Hollande. Hollande doesn't scare me so much. It is the Marine Le Pen speeches that scare the pants off me. I can barely follow what she's saying. It's not because she speaks awful French. Politics aside, she is highly well-spoken and if you don't know anything about French culture, you will never be able to make it through one of her speeches. They are choked full of cultural references and allusions, much of which sound HIGHLY literary at times, and at other times, highly idiomatic.

So, all in all I will continue to read translations, but I will give priority to "authentic material," originally written in French, by authors of ALL backgrounds.