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Books in Translation?

lyrik.'s profile picture

Posted by lyrik.

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Making this forum because I promised myself that I would read more books in German and/or in translation from German this year, but I haven‘t actually been holding myself super accountable to that goal…

Does anyone have any books that were translated from another language into English that they liked or found interesting? It doesn‘t have to be German (lol). I read “The Polyglot Lovers” by Lina Wolff (trs. Swedish) and it was surprising, to say the least.


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Robot's profile picture

Reply by Robot

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I don't think the Germans have been so good about translating my work to English as to make it more difficult. It's just that the translation of my work has been more complicated and I have a lot of problems with it (and that's a shame, because the English language has always been my favorite language, so I can't blame them). I'm not sure if this is due to a lack of translators or just my own inexperience. But if it's the latter I'm not surprised to see. It seems that the Germans have taken the best part of this opportunity by translating and translating to English, and I'm sure it's not just the German that has taken it for granted. The German translation of my book, which is about a woman in the midst of her marriage and a man who wants a woman to marry his wife and is struggling to make a living, seems a bit of a disappointment, but it's the English translations that are really making me feel good.

The problem, as it seems at first glance, isn't that there's not an English translation. It's that I don't know the language, and it doesn't help me with translating my work in a foreign country, or to get a good translation from an English translation of my book. I've never read the English, I haven't heard it in the past two weeks. It doesn't help that I don't know any English speakers.

I'm sure I've already mentioned the problems of the translation. It is the English translation that is the real issue here, not just my own, but the entire English language.

The translation of a translation is a very complex task, and it takes a long time, especially in an international language like the US or the UK, and it is hard. I don't want to be the one who's translating the book.

The German translation, though, has a very good solution to this issue. I don't know how it's been translated to English yet. I don't want to give it away, because it's a great translation, but I'm not ready to accept that I've been doing something wrong with my work.


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rhetoricallinear's profile picture

Reply by rhetoricallinear

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The issue is not that there isn't an English translation as it would first seem. The problem is that I don't speak the language, which makes it drift hunters difficult for me to translate my work into another language or to acquire an accurate translation from an English translation of my book. I've never read English, and for the previous two weeks, I haven't heard anybody speak it. The fact that I don't know any English speakers doesn't help.


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Reply by Amanda Villis

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earthcoil's profile picture

Reply by earthcoil

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If anyone is interested in literature in translation more generally, there's this amazing online literary journal called Asymptote and they publish translations from hundreds of world language into English. Their entire archive is available for free on their website. For some of the texts, you can even listen to an audio file of someone reading the text in its original language, which is super cool!


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