Dual Language Books/ Discussion on reading in translation

[seaofmilktea]

Has anyone ever bought any dual language books? I'm learning Spanish so I've got a few books with spanish poetry/ stories on one side and english translations on the other.
They seem to be quite uncommon; I've only recently discovered them. Is anyone here well aquainted with them? :)

It'd be interesting to discuss reading in translation too. So much is lost!
I remember my Spanish teacher telling me something disheartening about people never being able to really understand another culture no matter how many books/ films etc they consume. (Then again, I doubt if anyone can truly 'understand' their own culture.)

Meanwhile, I can't imagine how anyone can properly translate.Chinese poetry into english. The rhythm is usually completely ruined.

[loe]

Especially poetry books seem to be very often available in the dual language form. I really appreciate this because translating poetry is more an interpretation than a real translation.

I think the only book I have beside poetry which has more languages inside is Beckett's Waiting of Godot. The book includes the English, French an German version (If I'm not mistaken English and French was done by Beckett himself).

[Lokasenna]

A reasonable number of the texts I read in Old Norse and Old English come with a facing page translation - though I suspect this is more typical of dead languages than living ones. I think poetry, more than prose, is more likely to be given a facing translation, if only so the reader can get some sense of the original sound and rhythm.

[hannah_arendt]

There are many dual language version of Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska poems. Mostly it`s polish- english.

[bookowskee]

There's a bilingual edition of Jorge Luis Borges' Selected Poems. Good stuff.

[ennison]

I have Pessoa in a dual language edition. Many of his major poems are in it. Years since I read it.

[seaofmilktea]

Oh I'd love to read the Borges collection.

With poetry I find the syntax is very different from prose. Kowing the literal meaning of words isn't enough.

[Seasider]

I have a copy of Rilkes Die Stundenbuch with parallel translation. Unfortunately I cannot put my hand on it nor remember the name of the woman who did the translation. But I do remember I thought it was wonderful when I read it.
I thought of trying to do a parallel translation of some poems by Renee Vivien but eventually decided my French wasn't up to it..

[lichtrausch]

I use dual language books in two situations. When I'm learning a language, or when I'm reading something in a dead language. To me it's not worth it to learn a dead language to the level where I can read stuff without some kind of a crutch. That would require reading dozens and dozens of books in that dead language. But the amount of interesting material in dead languages is quite limited unless you are a huge history buff or what not.

[lichtrausch]

I have a copy of Rilkes Die Stundenbuch with parallel translation.

Das Stundenbuch ;)

[papillondemai]

I have a dual language edition of Arthur Rimbaud's Complete Works and Selected Letters by Wallace Fowlie. Also Illuminations, and Season In Hell and The Drunken Boat, both translated by Louise Varese and published by New Directions. Excellent for studying Rimbaud in French without having to constantly be looking up words.

[mona amon]

I like to read Les Fleurs du mal from this website - http://fleursdumal.org/ I read the original with my limited knowledge of French, and look up the stuff I don't understand in the translation. Much better that constantly referring to the dictionary.

[*Classic*Charm*]

I read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf which had the Gaelic translation on the facing page. It made no sense to me, but was an interesting study nonetheless.

[lichtrausch]

I read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf which had the Gaelic translation on the facing page. It made no sense to me, but was an interesting study nonetheless.
Are you sure it wasn't the Old English original on the facing page?

[quidoftullamore]

Aura by Carlos Fuentes has an English/Spanish bilingual edition.

[cafolini]

Aura by Carlos Fuentes has an English/Spanish bilingual edition.

An interesting book coming from Fuentes. It might be one of its kind in his repertoire, at least in length. Two people in need elaborate a successful fantasy. Fuentes is well-known for being a very critical writer.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Are you sure it wasn't the Old English original on the facing page?

Oh! You're right! I looked it up haha- it was a few years ago now that I read it.

[Tomwk]

Just like all of you have been mentioning, poetry is the usual genre for bilingual editions, mostly because editors and translators realise how much cannot be truly rendered from a language to another. The endless lyrical resources that make poetry be poetry practically disappear from a language to the other, unless a certain work bumps into a very artful translator who can come up with effective ways of making the new language convey the same or similar aesthetic bliss as the original one.

This last thing sounds brilliant in theory, but unfortunately, it often ends up in actual verbal entaglements that give readers in other languages false impressions about certain works. For example, the average reader of the Divine Comedy in Spanish will probably have the idea that Dante's masterpiece is much more inaccessible and unreadable than the average reader of the Commedia in English. This is because almost all translations of it in Spanish attempt to keep the terza rima, causing the tercetos to have the appearance of having been trapped inside a tornado (words are added, removed, mixed up and so simply to keep the form).

To sum up, all these titanic translation tasks (usually unavailing) can be avoided either by bilingual editions or really good prose ones (that's how I read the Commedia and the Odyssey; accepting of course that something is always lost in translation).

[Sandy J.]

I tend to agree with Tomwk. For bilingual/parallel text books I actually prefer current titles vs. classic literature. I discovered book that's written about Spain (and of course bilingual Spanish-English), Los Secretos Mejor Guardados de España/ Spain's Best Kept Secrets. It's great if you're planning a trip to Spain or simply want to daydream about that spectacular country...in English or in Spanish!