this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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What language do you read in? (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 months ago by penquin@lemm.ee to c/books@lemmy.world
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I read in both Arabic and English. Some books are very hard for me to grasp, so I find a translated copy and read it in Arabic. For example, I'm currently reading "the Count of Monte Cristo". It Has some old English that gets me confused a lot, even though I have a Kobo where I can just press and hold on a word to translate it, but still, the storyline as a whole got confusing, so I read it in Arabic. Much better. I'd love to hear from folks here :)

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[–] InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In my experience, many translations suck hard, to the point of, having on occasion compared different language versions of a novel, wondering how can readers of the translated version understand certain passages at all… So, I also try to read in the original if possible, if it is Portuguese, Spanish, French, English or Esperanto. I can kinda understand Italian as well but not enough to read a full-length novel… Still learning German…

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

You're right, and with AI in the picture, there are some horrendous translations out there. That's why I always compare with the original before reading a book on Arabic. The other day, I was trying to read one of Yanis Varoufakis's books in Arabic, and it made zero sense. It was translated horribly. So, I got it in English and it makes much more sense.