3 ms·

This is such a sad and utilitarian take. I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many languages as possible. I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cie

This is such a sad and utilitarian take. I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many languages as possible. I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
You'd rather spend hundreds of hours learning enough Spanish to read 100 Years of Solitude, then read 100 Years of Solitude, then hundreds more hours learning Russian, then read Dostoevsky - when both of these works have already been translated to death by some of the world's most talented translators into English? I side with the utilitarian here. You're in a very small class of people if the inherent joy of language learning is so strong for you that that sounds like a good idea. Like, think of all the other things you could do with that time. Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2?
- FlyingSnake 1y ago
  I’ve read these classics in the languages I know. I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. I think our time scales are on different scales. I treat this as a lifelong pursuit and savour it slowly in a leisurely manner. I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    >I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. This is an interesting point where our experiences totally differ. I have myself read a few classics in both original and translation, between the English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate, such as Cien Años de Soledad as you mentioned. I percieved little if any drop in quality between Marquez and the translation - indeed I often thought the translated work was superior to the original. It's not a classic in the same vein, but I similarly found the modern Latin translations of Harry Potter were much more fun than the original English prose, which even as a kid felt very workaday and even uninspired at times to me. So I see this more as evidence that you put a very high aesthetic value on linguistic purism than anything else. You don't just want the thing, you like working really hard to get the original thing. You like pushing the boulder up that hill. To be clear, I consider that an extremely commendable character trait, I just also think it means you're living on another planet compared to most of the population. Which isn't a bad thing, it's nice here. >I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way. It may be a sacrifice you're happy to make, but you are absolutely making some kind of large tradeoff every time you invest 500-1500 hours into learning a new language to C1 level, man. Like come on. That's like the economic definition of an opportunity cost.
    - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
      ... Although, there is one really interesting possibility I failed to account for here. The Indian subcontinent is ancient, and so is its literary tradition. It's possible that truly ancient works like the various parts of the Mahabharata genuinely can't be translated at a high enough level of quality - because they actually happened. They are not entirely fictional accounts of a time and place so fundamentally different to our own, that no attempt at a translation within a secular context could work well, because the whole semantic space of modern language is just too divergent from it. It would be like handing a caveman a copy of Accelerando or something. I did know one guy in college who learned Aramaic for a few years years, and eventually recoiled in horror and stopped because this was the conclusion he came to.
      - FlyingSnake 1y ago
        Nah man, I’m not aiming for any linguistic purity or any such thing. All I want is to experience the sounds, smells, quirks, slangs and unique things that make up the culture. e.g. when I read „Stasiland “, I knew exactly what Miriam felt. When I read the „Kite runner”, as an ex-kite runner, I felt one with Aamir and Hassan. Linguistic purity reminds me of casteism/accentism which I abhor. I just want to be as close as the original experience as possible, and it maybe my naive thinking that original languages capture that nuance better? However your point about English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate is interesting and may explain your reasoning. Indian works like Mrityunjaya or Godān can easily be read in many Indic languages without any drop of quality. You might be surprised but I’ve actually found German translations of Mahabharata or Tripitaka to be much better then English ones.
- Barrin92 1y ago
  >Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2? Because as Nabokov said, what a scholar one could be if one could only read five or six books. Real knowledge lies in depth, full exploration, individuation. Knowing five books totally, having one unique experience, is worth infinitely more than checking books of your Goodreads list. Oppenheimer learned Sanskrit just to read the Gita. Was that "utilitarian"? No, but he didn't care, because utilitarianism is a suckers philosophy anyway. Don't try to be good by some stupid quantitative metric, try to do something interesting.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    One notes that Nabokov did not in fact only read 5 or 6 books. Curious. Let's take him at face value, though. Why not read 2 classics 10 times instead of just once, then? Most every language with a writing system has at least 2 classics these days. Finnish, for example: Sinuhe egyptiläinen and Seitsemän veljestä. English: The Bible and Bart Simpson's Guide to Life. Etc. Re/ Oppenheimer, I wouldn't necessarily point at the guy who rained atomic hellfire upon Japan as someone with an especially sound moral compass, or even an interesting view on anything except how to dispense violence at scale. It is true there's a lot of violence in the Gita, so, I dunno, maybe he was just trying to read it as a self-insert fic or something. I don't think you have to be a utilitarian to say he probably did a lot of really bad things, in fact I think it helps not to be. A deontologist can at least say "I don't care if you think someone else will do it anyway, it's still bad and you shouldn't pull that lever."
azangru 1y ago
> I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian. I wouldn't call reading Dostoevski fun in any language (and I did read it in Russian) :-)

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

You'd rather spend hundreds of hours learning enough Spanish to read 100 Years of Solitude, then read 100 Years of Solitude, then hundreds more hours learning Russian, then read Dostoevsky - when both of these works have already been translated to death by some of the world's most talented translators into English? I side with the utilitarian here. You're in a very small class of people if the inherent joy of language learning is so strong for you that that sounds like a good idea. Like, think of all the other things you could do with that time. Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2?

FlyingSnake 1y ago
I’ve read these classics in the languages I know. I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. I think our time scales are on different scales. I treat this as a lifelong pursuit and savour it slowly in a leisurely manner. I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  >I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. This is an interesting point where our experiences totally differ. I have myself read a few classics in both original and translation, between the English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate, such as Cien Años de Soledad as you mentioned. I percieved little if any drop in quality between Marquez and the translation - indeed I often thought the translated work was superior to the original. It's not a classic in the same vein, but I similarly found the modern Latin translations of Harry Potter were much more fun than the original English prose, which even as a kid felt very workaday and even uninspired at times to me. So I see this more as evidence that you put a very high aesthetic value on linguistic purism than anything else. You don't just want the thing, you like working really hard to get the original thing. You like pushing the boulder up that hill. To be clear, I consider that an extremely commendable character trait, I just also think it means you're living on another planet compared to most of the population. Which isn't a bad thing, it's nice here. >I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way. It may be a sacrifice you're happy to make, but you are absolutely making some kind of large tradeoff every time you invest 500-1500 hours into learning a new language to C1 level, man. Like come on. That's like the economic definition of an opportunity cost.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    ... Although, there is one really interesting possibility I failed to account for here. The Indian subcontinent is ancient, and so is its literary tradition. It's possible that truly ancient works like the various parts of the Mahabharata genuinely can't be translated at a high enough level of quality - because they actually happened. They are not entirely fictional accounts of a time and place so fundamentally different to our own, that no attempt at a translation within a secular context could work well, because the whole semantic space of modern language is just too divergent from it. It would be like handing a caveman a copy of Accelerando or something. I did know one guy in college who learned Aramaic for a few years years, and eventually recoiled in horror and stopped because this was the conclusion he came to.
    - FlyingSnake 1y ago
      Nah man, I’m not aiming for any linguistic purity or any such thing. All I want is to experience the sounds, smells, quirks, slangs and unique things that make up the culture. e.g. when I read „Stasiland “, I knew exactly what Miriam felt. When I read the „Kite runner”, as an ex-kite runner, I felt one with Aamir and Hassan. Linguistic purity reminds me of casteism/accentism which I abhor. I just want to be as close as the original experience as possible, and it maybe my naive thinking that original languages capture that nuance better? However your point about English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate is interesting and may explain your reasoning. Indian works like Mrityunjaya or Godān can easily be read in many Indic languages without any drop of quality. You might be surprised but I’ve actually found German translations of Mahabharata or Tripitaka to be much better then English ones.
Barrin92 1y ago
>Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2? Because as Nabokov said, what a scholar one could be if one could only read five or six books. Real knowledge lies in depth, full exploration, individuation. Knowing five books totally, having one unique experience, is worth infinitely more than checking books of your Goodreads list. Oppenheimer learned Sanskrit just to read the Gita. Was that "utilitarian"? No, but he didn't care, because utilitarianism is a suckers philosophy anyway. Don't try to be good by some stupid quantitative metric, try to do something interesting.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  One notes that Nabokov did not in fact only read 5 or 6 books. Curious. Let's take him at face value, though. Why not read 2 classics 10 times instead of just once, then? Most every language with a writing system has at least 2 classics these days. Finnish, for example: Sinuhe egyptiläinen and Seitsemän veljestä. English: The Bible and Bart Simpson's Guide to Life. Etc. Re/ Oppenheimer, I wouldn't necessarily point at the guy who rained atomic hellfire upon Japan as someone with an especially sound moral compass, or even an interesting view on anything except how to dispense violence at scale. It is true there's a lot of violence in the Gita, so, I dunno, maybe he was just trying to read it as a self-insert fic or something. I don't think you have to be a utilitarian to say he probably did a lot of really bad things, in fact I think it helps not to be. A deontologist can at least say "I don't care if you think someone else will do it anyway, it's still bad and you shouldn't pull that lever."

azangru 1y ago

> I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian. I wouldn't call reading Dostoevski fun in any language (and I did read it in Russian) :-)