commonality of prose? So I see alot of y'all being all

>>8200593
Most of why I read is for the writing, the prose, etc.. So if I can't find a translation of something that sounds phenomenal I just try to find something in my own language. It's kind of depressing desu.

>>8200593
>foreign culture
Not really, there's a huge amount of sharing between cultures in the modern world anyway. Subtleties might be lost but who cares if it's meaningful/enjoyable for you?

>foreign language
That's literally what the translation is for. Why on earth would you need a strong understanding if a language to read a -translation- of it?

>>8200619
>>8200613

well I mean especially in eastern languages, in Chinese (probably similar for Japanese and Korean as well)

They have a thing called Cheng Yu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu

there's an entire other level in the way they use language, not just as a simple idiom or a reference, but also has to do with the interplay of the pictographs and radicals that exist in the chinese characters, while the translator can probably find a similar english idiom, reading without the knowledge of the original language seems like you'd lose so much of that, unless the translator also includes like an entire section of dfw-ish footnotes. I'm wondering if there's examples of this kind of thing in other languages, especially Russian, German and French. Wonder if there's a native speaker that's read the English translation of any of the classics that can share their thoughts about this