>taught myself french to read without relying on a translators interpretation >tfw it’s almost identical to the English translation and I wasn’t really missing anything feels like I’ve totally wasted my time.
>>25504105You could be the second greatest Proust scholar in the United States.
>>25504105Read untranslated stuff. Like EGA or SGA.
Read the great stylists in French. I always hear Flaubert's French is beautiful. Francis de Sales' French is supposedly masterful as well.
Yeah dawg i’m sure Ronsard, Mallarmé and Roubaud are all identical in english lol.
>>25504146Is (prose) stylist even a thing in French language? Isn’t it an anglo thing?
I’ve actually had the opposite issue of reading German translated literature (Goethe) in French and being suprised at its superiority over the English version. Shouldn’t it translate better to its fellow Germanic language? How is this even possible?
Read La Horde du Contrevent. It's a French fantasy novel that was apparently a major inspiration for the game Expedition 33. It's full of complicated French wordplay and is considered almost impossible to translate faithfully.
>>25504225>Shouldn’t it translate better to its fellow Germanic language?Doesn't matter if the translator is a retard>How is this even possible?The translator is a retard
I taught myself to read French because I wanted to learn a language for literature and French seemed like the best value language to learnNow I mainly read in French and don't read in English anymore I want to buy volume 1 of the Pléiade Faulkner edition, I recently bought the Poe editionI don't care if it's different, I don't read literature in english so why would it matter
>>25504105Should've learned Chinese instead. I've been trying to tell you.
>>25504105now you can read Celine>>25504225>How is this even possible?English is a poor language, french translations are carefully done
>>25504231I remember someone shilling this a while ago. I'm pretty sure it's translated too or maybe an anon was working on a translation.
French prose peaked during the Ancient Regime so start there
>I read Harrie Peauxterre en Francais and it wasn't any better than in English. I guess that proves that French is a useless language.
>>25504105The French are jinxing my nails with this stuff. Make /lit/ memes real and post them. Ouch my untranslated stuff got to make ferry...
>>25504110Who’s the third greatest?
Question for those with a high level of French....Do you / did you start by reading physical books or ebooks? I am at an intermediate level. I have lute set up (self hosted version of lingq). It's great having the integrated vocab tools / dictionary / verb conjugation etc, and I can also sync the audiobook... but it feels more like a textbook exercise than reading a book. I want to swap to reading physical books like I do in English. To actually enjoy the book. Or maybe I should delay started to read proper literature until I reach a higher level I've tried graded readers but I hate them. Hard to guess my level as I haven't followed a formal plan and just picked up most things. So, for example, I can watch French youtube but can't write a thing! I tend to feel happy with audio and reading approach B2, but my writing and speaking is very poor at say A2. I've made a planner for the year though and my goal in 1 year is C1. I've got a tons of textbooks and working my way properly from A2 up to C1, and will hopefully aim to pass the exam. I'd like to read more in French for my own pleasure, not for just learning. Ideally francophone writers in French. Some books I'd like to approach; Camus - L'etrangerCamus - La ChuteRené Barjavel - RavageRené Barjavel - La Nuit des tempsJean Raspail - Le Camp des Saints (? maybe too hard)Paul Grauwin - J’étais médecin à Diên Biên PhuJean-Marie Drouin - Le Cercle rougeAntoine de Saint-Exupéry - Terre des hommes
>>25504105You should read poetry.
I'm Flemish and I taught myself how to read German but I can't speak or write German to save my life. How does this work? The brain is a black box.
>>25506280don't be an idiot and just try reading those books, ebooks work well because you can look shit up easily. going to C1 via textbooks is retarded, chances are you are still going to look up every other word when you start reading. enjoy pain, enjoy gains.
>>25506364>going to C1 via textbooks is retardedWhat are you taking about?You don't use textbooks to help learn a language? No grammar books, no general a2/b1/b2 etc student book, no phonetics book, no delf practice books....How the fuck are you learning a language without using language learning materials?Did you misinterpret what I wrote?
>>25506358weirdly enough i'm franchophone and german is natural for me, and dutch less so, let alone netherlands dutch
Feel the same way about Latin and Greek. Complete waste of time, but to see the nifty etymology.
>>25506358Passive skills (reading, listening) are easier to improve than active skills (writing, speaking). It’s also easier to overestimate your reading skill level.
>>25504105French and English are such similar languages, what "interpretations" are you even talking about? They can be translated almost word for word literally with no issue. Sure, some translators may take liberties with style and cadence, but the substance itself is exactly the same. Why didn't you learn Russian or Japanese or something actually open to interpretation?
>>25506280>I have lute set up (self hosted version of lingq).I just googled it. Sounds interesting and I’ve never used lingq/lute. It seems there are ways to export the word list to anki too.But I’m worried about sourcing the books/texts.- (Pirated) ebooks have many typos.- Standard Ebooks only fix books in English. No equivalent in other languages.- Old public domain books in Project Gutenberg were written before the spelling reforms. And probably have typos too.
>>25506608Lute’s image search when adding new words sounds interesting but I can’t modify the search terms. So it will just give me a bunch of AI slop. Unfortunate. This is a deal breaker.
I always wonder if I could ever appreciate the beauty of prose in a second language, even after achieving fluency. it feels like something that maybe only natives can truly "get". being comfortable enough in japanese to read some novels with a dictionary, I can tell styles that piss me off, but haven't felt wowed by anything yet, granted I only read LN slop
>>25506608It's good. It's very janky, and needs a bit of tweaking, but it does it's job well. I have it running on a small home server in docker, but you can run it on a single computer just the same. I'm not sure about your concerns regarding ebooks. I've not really noted any problems like that.Lute can import lots of different things. It's quite flexible. Or covert something random to txt file, tidy it up manually, and import that way.
>>25506628There's an option to upload an image or to add via paste from clipboardDoes that not help? Surely it's be quicker to image search in a separate browser and copy/paste or save/upload than rely on the integrated browsing anyway.
>>25506632>I'm not sure about your concerns regarding ebooks.Do you think the rest of us were just memeing about ebook typos? Do you think Standard Ebooks just copy-pasted Project Gutenberg’s ebooks without fixing typos and updating spellings of many words?Do you literally deny real historical events when countries modernized and changed the standard spellings of their languages?
