I wanna read Don Quijote but my Spanish is not the most amazing.

Spanish is my mother tongue. I read Don Quijote for the first time when i was 19. There isn't as big a difference between modern day spanish and Cervantes' (although the letter by the king and his scribe were really tough to read).

If your spanish is good enough to read, say, Cien años de soledad, you should be fine

>>9480355
Really? I had heard/assumed that his Spanish was like Shakespearean English

>>9480327
Is Lathrop's translation good? I bought the Signet Classics version some time ago because it was dirt cheap and just left it in some corner gathering dust.

>>9480388
It is thougher; mostly for how the characters talk in big sentences. But there aren't many archaic words, and even then they can be guessed trough context. The difference between olde english and spanish, is english seems to have changed it's whole vocabulary, whereas spanish only abandoned words or figures of speech. Also, Cervantes was considered a peasant and a simple writer by his peers, so his spanish may not be the thoughest from that era

Cervantes edit is hard to read even for a native spanish speaker. There's a modern spanish translation by Trapiello which took him 14 years. It's the most commonly read and keeps the "tang" from the original.

For comparison:
http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000042946
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/quijotetrapiello.pdf