>don't read in translation >but I can't read the original language >then learn it >but why would I spend years of my life learning a language to read a book if I don't even know if I would even like it enough to finish it?>it's not my job to educate you
>>24981137dekinigs really will just sit there and read a rando's fanfic instead of what the author actually wrote
Just read in translation and reread in original the stuff you like, or read both at the same time like Borges with Dante
>>24981137>read it not understanding anything>damn this shit sucks, prose is barely intelligible >throw book away, move on with my life
As a literary enthusiast you ought to study at least one language, preferably French, but aside from that it's a retarded endeavor
>>24981137Nobody cares whether you consoom your /lit/tertainment in translation or not, but this attitude of how one can't be bothered to learn literally anything new/difficult because one supposedly has much more important things to do is actual degeneracy.
>>24981279this>>24981137>wojackposterrope
>>24981146It is not humanly possible to learn every language on Earth, or even the few dozen with an appreciable literature.
>>24981146>weebshitterOpinion discarded
>>24981279iq mogged
The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
>>24982221To cover 95% of literature worth reading you only need English, French, German, Spanish and Russian.If you're a native English speaker, it's possible to get sufficiently good to read in French and Spanish in a year. Give German another year and disregard Russian. That's all you need, mere two years to boost your reading comprehension beyond the dreams of monolingual plebs.
>>24982586Except the languages that are easiest to learn also have the best translations. I learned French to read and I can’t say that English translations depart much from the original text. Or if they do, I can’t tell.
>>24982586>To cover 95% of literature worth reading you only need English, French, German, Spanish and Russian.Millennia of Chinese literature alone.
>>24982221Mark of a non-serious reader if you don‘t have a second and maybe a third language which are your home base of further study. Learning just well enough to read (which is like halfway to fluency) is good enough for any hobby horses beyond that.
>>24981137>Be born French>Learn English effortlessly through the InternetI was preferred by Fate it seems, feels good.inb4>But you live in FranceThe women are good, the weather is good, the parks are nice, the internet is nice. Socialism and decay is present everywhere to a different degree, whatever, France is nice.
>>24982632Sure, learning a few is one thing, but there will always be works you can only access in translation.
>>24982677
>>24981276I would just study German to be honest>Frenchwhy would I give the time of the day to such a charlatan language?
>>24982511Based
>>24982728German is a second rate literary tradition
>>24982728"why study french when you can study a worse language where you have to rotely memorize what gender window, fridge, and sidewalk are?"
>>24982833A few dozen rules will steer you right like 80-90 percent of the time.
Reminder:>"But, as I said before, your young men do well to come to us and learn our language; for, not only does our literature merit attention on its own account, but no one can deny that he who now knows German well, can dispense with many other languages. Of the French, I do not speak; it is the language of conversation, and is indispensable in travelling, because everybody understands it, and in all countries we can get on with it instead of a good interpreter. But as for Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, we can read the best works of those nations in such excellent German translations, that, unless we have some particular object in view, we need not spend much time upon the toilsome study of those languages. It is in the German nature duly to honour after its kind, everything produced by other nations, and to accommodate itself to foreign peculiarities. This, with the great flexibility of our language, makes German translations thoroughly faithful and complete. And it is not to be denied that, in general, you get on very far with a good translation. Frederick the Great did not know Latin, but he read Cicero in the French translation with as much profit as we who read him in the original."
>>24981137>ackshually the book is really terribly written>no, I will ignore the fact that it's a translation>no, you can NOT read other translations as it's wrongthink
