A question to the multilinguals of Yea Forums

What are your standards for a book's language?
Do you just prefer it in your native, the original language of the book if you speak it, maybe in one particular language you learned and found it to be good for reading, what is it and why?

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hungarianreview.com/article/the_angel_s_son_why_i_learned_hungarian_late_in_life
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Depends on particular book. Books with some language play may be translated better or worse - for instance "Clockwork Orange" in Polish, French, German etc. translation is a better book than the English original.

French translations of english books are better

I read too much English and not enough Spanish, so now I can't write well in either

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I speak Hungarian (native), English and some German.
I try to buy books in Hungarian usually but I give the book a brief view in English online and ask around to see if there's much to be lost in translation, if no then I roll with my native language.

I speak German (native) and English. I try reading books in English and use my native language only if the book originally is in it too.
It's not difficult reading in English and a lot of authors wrote in it. So I could keep myself busy indefinitely with worthwhile books.

And yes, things do get lost in translation.

Reading Vonnegut in German is better too.
I read in English and French more often but they tend to be the original language of the book. My native language anything written recently is for teenagers about how drugs are awful. Most teenagers doing drugs in my country don't speak my native language though so fuck knows why.

I can read in four languages. If possible, I always read in the original. If not, then I pick a translation in the closest language I speak. However, stuff like availability, price and quality of the translation/edition also factor in my decision.

Fuck anónimo, same happened to me
Now i've been some months only reading in spanish and i regained some clarity. English fucks you up in the head

I read books in their original language as far as that is possible. It becomes interesting when deciding which language to use when translation is necessary. So I read Russian in German and Japanese in English for example.

I am a native Spanish speaker. I prefer the original language over translations. If the original language is a romance language I choose the Spanish translation, for every other language I choose English mostly because it's easier to find the books online and because Spanish translations are dodgy sometimes.

Always read in the original if I understand it. I know Spanish, English, French, Catalan and some German and Italian.
If I don't know the language I read in Spanish, unless the language is very similar to one of the others I know.

Is Hungarian worth learning?
I speak only English and my native language.

that's for you to decide
Hungarian literature is rich
but I have the feeling that all "small" languages have a rich literary tradition
it's just that it doesn't look as good on your CV as German, Spanish, French etc
if that is an issue at all
hungarianreview.com/article/the_angel_s_son_why_i_learned_hungarian_late_in_life

Learning Hungarian like any language is dependant on your circumstances, do you plan on coming here for a few years, migrating, working here or something like that? Absolutely.
Wanna learn it only for occasional online usage? Don't even attempt, especially not a fairly hard one like Hungarian.

There's much in store in terms of literature if that's what you mean.

I only read in English.

Working on German. Once I can read sufficiently I'm going to give French a try since I had to take French classes throughout school but never learned a thing.

If the book is written in French or English, I read the original. Else, just plain Portuguese will do. But I occasionally read stuff translated to English because it's easier to find epubs.

My native language is portuguese, I can also read in spanish and english. I'll prefer to read in portuguese if the book was originally written in a latin language (french, italian, latim) or greek. Otherwise, I'll either read in the original language (if I can do it) or search for a good quality english translation.

No don't bother, even when I visit family in Hungary I just use English everyday

If I can, I read the book in it's original language, but I honeslty couldn't bring myself to read a french book translated in english, english translations are usually pretty shit, for french and german at least

>the original language of the book if you speak it
Obviously this. Why know a language, if I won't use it for reading literature?
But if the text is from a language that is not one of those I know, I dig around and see who translated it in which language. Usually I prefer my native, particularly if the translator is a respected one, but in some cases, a lack of newer translations (common for classical literature, for some reason) or a well-developed philology of the language (far eastern ones, usually), I'll choose English.

>English lit
untranslated
>German lit
untranslated
>Polish lit
untranslated
>Romance languages lit
translated into English or Polish until I learn Italian
>Russian lit
untranslated or translated into Polish

The idea is to always try to stay relatively close to the original language. For instance, I read Kierkegaard translated into German rather than English (but that's mostly because I don't trust Anglo translators not to fuck up). Similarly, I avoid reading Russian works in translation other than Polish, because English is too lossy for that and some Polish translations are genuinely congenial.