>Reads a translated poem

>still hasn't learned Old English to read Beowulf
>still hasn't learned Old Norse to read the Eddas
>still hasn't learned Farsi to read Rubaiyat
>still hasn't learned Sumerian and Akkadian to read Gilgamesh
pleb

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>>9078209
>reads a transcript of slam poetry

>He read Homer rather than build a time machine and listen to Homer

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>>9078226
>tfw we read the Eddas in high school because Old Norse and Icelandic are incredibly similar

>reads originally serialised novel bound in a single tome

The argument against translated poetry is retarded. Judge the fucking thing on it's own merit and who cares in which language it originated.

>>9078276
>being this pleb
I'm not even memeing, you should change your shit opinion or kys yourself.

>>9078276
You can only judge it as a translated work, not the poem as written by the poet. Sometimes translated works can be exceptionally beautiful in their own right.

>>9078288
>You can only judge it as a translated work, not the poem as written by the poet.
Whats the difference?

>>9078209
Rilke is amazing in any language.

>>9078309
He's saying you can only evaluate it on how well it translates the original.
Which is weird, because then you'd have to read the original, and if you can there's no point to reading the translation.

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>>9078276
>>9078309
>>9078317

How can your people be this stupid? What happened to this board, the average IQ has been in free fall for a while now.

>>9078309
The language and the sound, you tard. Seriously hope you're kidding. Nobody can be this stupid.

>>9078326
>He thinks IQ measures anything other than your capability to score in IQ tests
>He thinks that it isn't his fault he's uncomprehensible
Gee, man.

>>9078336
That was my first post lad the dude you were responding to is referencing something self explanatory

>He thinks IQ measures anything other than your capability to score in IQ tests

t. Brainlet tbqhwy

>>9078317
>He's saying you can only evaluate it on how well it translates the original.
I don't agree. I think people put too much value on the 'originality' of things, translating is an incredibly creative process in itself, agruably, in some cases, even harder than the original effort. It's quite disingenuous to say 'well that guy simply changed words in one language to another, big deal'. Translations stand in the same category as movie remakes, nothing stops them from exceeding the original, the important thing is to disengage completely from the original/not original dichotomy and judge every piece of literature in the vacuum. For example, Golding's Metamorphoses inspired me to learn latin, only to spend several year, read the original work, and realise that it's kind of meh (granted I haven't got the same insight in latin as english, which isn't my native language either).

Man you people are filled with hate.
>>9078279
>>9078276
>>9078336
>>9078327
>>9078326

>>9078429
and for good reason, how can a person be so retarded

>>9078209

That's why I always buy bilingual editions. I only have a nominal grasp on French, yet I'm working my way through Roussel's New Impressions of Africa (and actually learning the language and its poetic use in the meantime).

>>9078544
>bilingual editions

Can you recomend a good brand of these?
Would really like to get better at my french as well without looking into the dictionary every second sentence.

>>9078552

Well, Roussel's work was published by the Princeton University Press' 'Facing Pages' series, which might be a good place to start (although I can only find a handful of works in that series). I know that Godine also published Life: A User's Manual in a bilingual, but aside from that they are slightly difficult to find, which is a shame.

>>9078552
Seconding this question but for German, specifically the German philosophers.

>>9079669
>specifically the German philosophers.
really doubt that exist desu senpai

>>9079744
Nice meme.
Seriously though, I'd appreciate some reccs of bilingual German philosophy books. Also Sprach Zarathustra, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, etc.

>>9081038
this

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>>9078209
>thinks xe will ever learn a language as well as a highly-skilled professional translator who is a native speaker of the poem's language

>>9078226
I heard Farsi is pretty easy to learn. I'm kinda tempted to learn it for the poetry. Is it worth my time?

>>9081093
>xe
Kys yourself

>>9078226
>still hasn't learned jive to read From Nickels to Ounces

>>9078552

yo i have a fuckton of these from dover and penguin, and the translations are 100% literal. i really hope you take my advice because i went through a lot until i found dover and penguin, trust me on this one. a good german one as well is "deutsch erzahlungen" by steinhauer.

this is mainly for literature though, not philosophical texts. they are aimed at helping language learners.

try to get the ones that say they have specific authors for the dover ones, because some of them can have shitty stories in them.

heres some for french

https://www.amazon.com/Demian-Dual-Language-Dover-Language-German-ebook/dp/B00IADUH02/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1486617012&sr=8-4&keywords=dover+french+bilingual

https://www.amazon.com/Candide-Dual-Language-Language-Guides-French/dp/0486276252

https://www.amazon.com/French-Stories-Fran%C3%A7ais-Dual-Language-English/dp/0486264432/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JSV4EGEJFAYKJNZYC3WM

heres an example of a shit book though, take a look at the authors. definitely want to avoid this, no literary merit, absolutely shit stories, etc. only use if you 100% care about learning the language and don't mind the awful stories

https://www.amazon.com/Great-French-Stories-Twentieth-Century/dp/0486476235/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0486476235&pd_rd_r=VG5G6HH0TGBZ3DGPT225&pd_rd_w=pSKz6&pd_rd_wg=FmFb4&psc=1&refRID=VG5G6HH0TGBZ3DGPT225

I think translations can be done well. I've read Shakespeare translations in my language and originals as well, I got almost the same experience.

>>9081038

dover dual language series is very good

https://www.amazon.com/Spoke-Zarathustra-Selections-sprach-Auswahl/dp/0486437116/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486617247&sr=8-1&keywords=Also+Sprach+Zarathustra+dual+language

>>9081096

if you know persian you can read texts from a thousand years ago. see what that means to you. it is very easy to learn for a westerner relative to other exotic languages. the grammar is very simple, logical, and the word-building very satisfying (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_vocabulary)

the biggest problem is the script, which isn't vowelled, meaning you need to use a dictionary (use one online) consistently.

and what i mean when i say the grammar is simple is that you can literally work through one 400 page grammar book (introduction to persian -thackston) or john mace's teach yourself persian/ grammar and be acquainted with virtually everything. you can study the rudiments and then just practice by reading newspapers or somehting and pick it up from there, it is not complicated.

brownie points too if a girl walks into your apartment and she sees a book in a foreign script.

also, lots of learning resources for persian available.

Marcel Weyland's translation of Pan Tadeusz is pretty comfy. Translation's fine if done right.

>>9078269
>tfw I will never be Icelandic

>>9081262
Cheers, mate. I'll give it a go. It's a pretty language.

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>reads the Bhagavad Gita
>doesn't travel to India to seek a Brahman priest and have him recite lord Krishna's words in beautiful Sanskrit

>>9081301
People overhype us 2bh but for /lit/ people it's definitely pretty great. You can always visit though.

Nietzsche (fluent in many languages) says that the most important things in literature survive translation.

And Harold Bloom, the great aesthete of our time, reads almost entirely in English (including translated Homer, Dante, Goethe).

>>9082449
Harold Bloom is a fucking idiot and it's time for you to realize that

>>9082473
So was Wilde; doesn't make him a bad aesthete, does it?

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>He read Shakespeare with footnotes

>Reads English "poems"

>>9082534
Why not? Gives you Elizabethan context which you'll know for next time.

Honestly makes me wonder what people from, say, the 1800s were thinking about the obscure passages or references.