Reading in Translation: Finding Your Way Into World Literature

Every translated novel is a collaboration, and every reader of translated fiction is participating in a small act of trust. We trust the translator to carry something across a gap we cannot cross ourselves, and we accept that what arrives is not quite the same object that left. This is not a flaw in the enterprise. It is the enterprise.

The first thing to say about reading in translation is that there is no single correct approach. Some readers seek out the most transparent translations, the ones that read as if they had been written in English. Others prefer translations that preserve the strangeness of the original, that let the syntax bend in ways English normally would not. Neither preference is more sophisticated than the other. They simply produce different reading experiences.

How to Choose What to Read

If you are new to translated fiction, the safest entry point is often a contemporary novel that has already found a wide readership in English. These books have usually been translated with an eye toward readability, and they tend to be well served by their publishers. But there is a risk in only reading what has already been blessed by the market: you end up with a narrow slice of what is actually being written around the world.

A better strategy, in my experience, is to follow translators rather than authors. Find a translator whose work you admire and read whatever they have worked on. Translators have tastes and preoccupations just as novelists do, and following them is a way of discovering books you would never have found through the usual channels. It is also a way of recognizing that translation is a creative act, not a mechanical one.

Another approach is to read in clusters. Pick a region, a language, or a historical period and read several books from it in close succession. The books begin to talk to each other. You notice recurring concerns, recurring formal strategies, the way different writers respond to the same pressures. This kind of reading is slower, but it is also more rewarding than reading a single translated novel in isolation.

It helps, too, to read about translation itself. The prefaces and afterwords that appear in translated editions are often fascinating documents, in which translators explain the choices they made and the problems they could not solve. Reading these notes is a reminder that every sentence in a translated novel was a decision, and that decisions have consequences.

What We Gain

The case for reading in translation is not simply that it broadens our horizons, though it does. It is that it changes how we read everything else. Once you have spent time with novels that do not obey the conventions of English prose, you begin to notice those conventions as conventions. You become a more alert reader of your own language, more aware of its habits and limitations.

There is also the simple pleasure of encountering a sensibility that is genuinely foreign, that does not share your assumptions about how a story should be told or what a character should be. This is not always comfortable. Sometimes it is frustrating. But it is one of the few ways we have of stepping outside our own heads, and it is worth the effort.

Start small. Pick one translated novel this month, read it slowly, and pay attention to the seams. You will find that the seams are where the interesting things happen.