The only language I know with any fluency is English. I want to read The Trial by Franz Kafka. The Trial was written in German and if I read an English translation I feel I am not really reading Kafka. Am i the only one who feels this way? Does it even matter?
Think of it like a film adaptation of a book, or a particular production of a stage play: it’s not the exact original, but it’s a work of art in its own right that others have contributed their interpretation to.
You’re closer to the work reading a translation more accessible to you than reading the original words with language friction. So you shouldn’t feel bad about reading a translation.
I get what you mean. Some copy of a Kafka book I had (I think it was the Trial) had this foreword about the tough translation choices they had to make and how some things were just hard to convey with the same sense. It kinda blew my mind reading Dante’s Inferno that they were able to translate poetry and have it make sense and still flow like a poem.
But as someone who enjoys language dabbling, I realize that I’ll only learn a few in my life, and those to a pretty limited level. For works that aren’t originally in that handful of languages, I don’t feel much regret for reading the English. The options are that, or to not engage with the work at all. If something is valuable enough to want to read, then surely it’s valuable enough to experience in some way, even if imperfect?
But then for the languages I do have some interest in learning, I do feel some tiny guilt reading translations. There’s value to me in setting up some book as a goal and hoping to read it as written. Still, I think the re-read, the 2nd time in original language, has its own appeal.
When I was a young I read Pyramids by Terry Pratchett in German. Months later I found out that the bookstore also had the English original, bought that and was totally surprised how much better the book is. No translations anymore since then.
I’m not very good at Turkish, Spanish, French, but when on holidays abroad I try to read the local newspapers. Much more immersive that way.
Translation sets a certain distance between you and the work, that is inevitable. But so does time, for example. Should you not read anything from earlier than the 1950s because language has changed?
I like to consult The Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English, which reviews most, though not all, translations of many well-known authors, including Kafka, and can give you an idea of some of the merits (or, I guess, also demerits) of the existing translations out there (up till 2000, at any rate, when the book was published).
If you’d like to get up and running quickly with German in a basic sort of way, I would suggest also taking a look at The Berlitz Self-Teacher: German.
