As a non-native English speaker the notion of calling books "translated fiction" is so weird to me😅 In my mind it has always been "-insert language- literature" since I grew up reading in the languages I speak or was/am learning & much of what is translated for English speakers is in it's original language for me. Did anyone else have that thought initially?🤔 I'm curious to find out😉 Wonderful video as always😊
Same! As an italian when I started watching a lot of english-speaking booktubers, I noticed that they "mention" when they read translated books, which I find quite weird, because those books are just novels to me. In Italy you are surrounded by translated books, from many different languages and we just refer to it as italian literature, french, japanese, russian, american and so on. At this point I think that's just anglocentrism because I noticed that the anglo-saxons read mainly english/american literature so it is out of the ordinary for them to read something outside of it (which imho is a problem but still)
@@moonyf.9812 Yes, I think that the term "translated fiction" just comes from viewing English as the default, especially in the US. I've heard it less with British booktubers, probably because Europe is so multilingual (yay for that🤗).
Exactly! As a Brazilian, is extremely common in Brazil to read literature in translation, mostly from english speaking countries, even more common than reading our own literature. So, to me, as someone who reads primarily books that were originally written in english, it´s very weird to see someone treating a translated book as something "different", "unusual" or even special. But it´s a tendency that I´ve noticed watching booktubers who are from english speaking countries, maybe because generally they are not used to reading books from other countries and languages.
as a translator this makes me so happy! thank you so much for this video. I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but most of the time people don't really pay attention to the translators names. it's a very lonely job, but it's also so very rewarding.
Hi! I was previously looking to become a translator and perhaps it's stupid but I was wondering- when analysing or reading a work do youpay more attention to the author or the translator? What's right, praising the writer's style or the translator's style? I hope you're well!
@@sophieelsa7469 hello! your question is not stupid at all so I'm going to try my best to give you a good and honest answer. since what you read when you read a translation is the text of the translator, there's nothing you can do but to rely on them to get a sense of the original author's writing. each translator has their own style of translating so it's not something that's set in stone. some translators prefer a literal style (this means they translate almost word by word) and others prefer a more liberal style (which means the translator is free to convey the meaning of the text). I'd say you'd have to praise both. writing a book is not an easy task, but neither is communicating the meaning and ideas of the book in a different language. I hope this helps! sorry for the long ramble and thanks! I hope you're well, too and that you're having a lovely day.
Haha, this is what I do with my time :) 1. Beowulf 2. The Quest of the Holy Grail 3. Inferno (Dante) 4. The Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli) 5. Candide (Voltaire) 6. Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux) 7. The Lady of the Camelias (Alexandre Dumas) 8. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales (Franz Xaver von Schonwerth) 9. Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (Leo Tolstoy) 10. The Collected Poems (Arthur Rimbaud) 11. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert) 12. The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire) 13. Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev) 14. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 15. The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 16. War and Peace (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 17. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) 18. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis) 19. The Alienist (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis) 20. Against Nature 21. Touch Me Not (Jose Rizal) 22. The Broken Wings (Kahlil Girean) 23. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Franz Kafka) 24. Selected Poems (Pablo Neruda) 25. Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Rilke) 26. The Book of Hours (Rainer Maria Rilke) 27. Steppenwolf (Herman Hesse) 28. The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares) 29. Thirst for Love (Yukio Mishima) 30. Bestiary: Selected Stories (Julio Cortázar) 31. Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) 32. Hopscotch (Julio Cortazar) 33. The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Yukio Mishima) 34. The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende) 35. The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) 36. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez) 37. Agua Vida (Clarice Lispector) 38. The Master of Go (Yasunari Kawabata) 39. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel García Márquez) 40. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Patrick Süskind) 41. The Memory Police (Yōko Ogawa) 42. Blindness (José Saramago) 43. Collected Fiction (Jose Luis Borges) 44. some Anne Carson books 45. My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante) 46. The Days of Abandonment (Elena Ferrante) 47. Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi) 48. The Mystery of the Yellow Room (Gaston Leroux) 49. After Dark (Haruki Murakami) 50. Dance Dance Dance (Haruki Murakami) 51. The Elephant Vanishes (Haruki Murakami) 52. Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) 53. Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) 54. Killing Commentadore (Haruki Murakami) 55. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (Haruki Murakami) 56. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami) 57. Snow (Orhan Pamuk) 58. Pavane for a Dead Princess (Park Min-Gyu) 59. Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata) 60. Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto) 61. The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa) 62. Maidenhair (Mikhail Shishkin) 63. The Iliac Crest (Cristina Rivera Garza) 64. The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón) 65. Blood of Elves (Andrzej Sapkowski) 66. The Three-Body Problem (Liu Cixin) 67. Solaris (Stanisław Lem) 68. A Castle in the Clouds (Kierstin Gier) 69. Tao Te Chi (Lao Tzu)
i love when people on booktube give a shout-out to translators. my mom is a translator (from english to brazilian portuguese) so i grew up around linguists. since childhood, i understood how undervalued this profession is when there are so many lovely and extremely intelligent people in this profession, and they can become invisible. SPEAKING OF, if you liked água viva by clarice lispector, i’d highly suggest the hour of the star, which is her most famous story here in brazil (and personally one of my favorite books)!
If you want to read some Norwegian books I recommend A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen, Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, Victoria by Knut Hamsun and The History of Bees by Maja Lunde.
Jay Rubin, who is actually friends with Murakami at this point, has written a really good book on his fiction that you might be interested in, Emma. HARUKI MURAKAMI AND THE MUSIC OF WORDS. Dives into Murakami’s common themes we all know so well (jazz, cats, other worlds), his writing philosophy, biography - everything really. Gives such a lovely additional insight to his novels. 😊😊 (thanks, as ever, for a wonderful and informative video!)
Hi, Emmie. I am from Turkey. My English not perfect but I think, you understand me :) I saw "snow" written by Orhan Pamuk. I did not read, yet but I am so happy cause I saw the turkısh book. I recommend "serenade" written by Zülfü Livaneli. It is my favorite book. I hope you read. I think, you can find this book easily☺️
I love Inferno so much, but honestly Paradise from the Divine Comedy is underrated. Every like conveys pure beauty, and by the end of it you just want to do something productive with how optimistic it is
Hi, Emmie. You're probably the first booktuber who ever mentioned Noli Me Tangere/Touch Me Not from the Philippines. I'm really looking forward to hear what you think about it.Thank you for showcasing these amazing books from different countries. :)
I just finished Dante's Inferno and couldn't recommend it more. The imagery is next-level creepy (as crazy as it sounds, I think it might be the scariest book I've ever read) but the symbolism and plot itself was just incredible and so compelling. I know your TBR is insanely huge as it is but this one is worth your time I promise! ♡ (Exquisite video as always, by the way!)
wow, your collection is very impressive o.o I love your Japanese books! I plan on reading the English and the Hungarian translations simultaneously (yes, I'm a Hungarian), just to get a little insight on translation. and just to advertise my little country: if you wanna read a Hungarian classic (I think now it counts as one), The Door from Magda Szabó got pretty popular last year :)
I’m so glad you have Saramago in your bookshelf! I’m currently reading Baltasar and Blimunda and I feel like it will become a favourite. Saramago is absolutely brilliant!
Saramago is one of my favorite authors! There's something he said about the process of writing Blindness that often crosses my mind, it goes a little something like this: "The history of mankind is a continuous disaster. There was never anything that looked like a moment of peace. (...) This unrestrained anger led me to say something that most people might not agree with: we do not deserve life. Is it not clear yet that instinct serves animals better than reason serves humans? We live in delinquency, in violence. If that's how we choose to use reason, it would be better for us to have some other way of understanding ourselves. (...) That's why I asked this question, with absolute limpidity: what if we were all blind? In a way, we already are - blind to reason, because we do not use it to defend life, we use it to destroy it in every way we can. And that is what this book was written against." I really hope you like it :) if you do, I would recommend Death with Interruptions: "The next day, no one died.", just a book about how basically death gets tired of everyone critizing its work so it goes on vacation (and the disastrous consequences this entails). If you're looking into exploring portuguese literature, I would also recommend Fernando Pessoa, a true genius and, in my opinion, Portugal's greatest gift to literature :)
Such an amazing collection!! 🥰 You should definitely try reading a czech author, I'm czech and there are quite a lot of excellent pieces I think you'd really enjoy!
Please, please, PLEASE read Baltazar amd Belimunda before you read Blindness, it's so much more magical and uplifting. If one hundred years of solitude is your favorite book i'm 98% sure you are going to loooove that book
I should look for a copy of one hundred years of solitude in english. I can't imagine the struggle of translating Gabo Márquez into any other language. I've always wondered how expressions and certain sentences with double meaning would be in english. Even read him in spanish is a whole thing. Btw, right now I'm reading Love in the time of cholera. Less than fifty pages to the end. Of course, another masterpiece.
I just have a question! Emma, I know you mentioned that you are canadian. Is it part of the Canadian dialect to say "the French" rather than just French? Or am i just speaking english like a hillbilly haha
Emma, it would be really helpful if you could do a video on what makes a good translation. In my ignorance I don't really understand why one book should be translated differently when they are all translating the same language/book.
translation is more than just simply transcribing the book into another language. translators are tasked with capturing the essence of the original work, and they may have to take creative liberties and slightly alter the original text to do this. sometimes you simply can't articulate something in another language, so translators are in a sense writing an entire new book. each translator has their own interpretation meaning translations vary
I'm a professional translator and what we do is basically deconstruct the text and try to give the same meaning in another language. sometimes this means slightly altering the text, since a literal translation doesn't necessarily give the same meaning/evoke the same feelings of the original text. all translators have their own unique way of translating. some are more literal than others. in a sense, a literary translator needs to be a good writer themselves. I'd say a good translation is one that conveys the same meaning than the original text and also evokes the same feelings.
Your taste is top tier in these books & all in all world literature tbh ❤ so glad you're a literature student coz you're true to you heart's desire.. And that is literature!
From what I can tell of your tastes, I highly recommend Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand. A beautiful poetic French play. One of my favorites. And you should also check out Paul Coelho if you haven't yet. My favorite is the Alchemist.
Nice collection. Strongly recommend Modern Greek Fiction. Give it a go, you'll be surprised. Also, a recommended author very much related to modem Greece is Victoria Hislop (no translated fiction though since she's from the UK). :)
I read Les Miserables in college (for fun) and became hyper focused on it (I’m ND), and I became so obsessed I owned four different translations, a few notebooks’s worth of scribbles about Hugo, French history, Napoleon, etc. The notebooks vanished during a move, which devastated me. Easily four months of near-daily hyper-focus. It made for a splendid, splendid summer. 😍
I just started to read Blindness (in the Dutch translation). and I have to say that’s it’s a ride, I’m on page 109/300 and it’s definitely worth it, and something I didn’t expect to be so extreme.
@@joannaszulc1496 Actually, the translated fiction market in the UK has doubled the last 15 years and sells more on average than literary fiction originally written in English! However, the English book market is so huge that a lot of people probably think it's enough/it's already so much to choose from? Also, there is a misconception that translated fiction is difficult, dense and a bit pretentious. But people are starting to realize the importance of diversity I think, and that fantasy, thrillers and romance novels are also translated, not just prize winning literary fiction which can seem a bit out of reach for a lot of people.
Fathers and Sons is great!! So far my favorite Russian work, though I haven't read too many. As for Crime and Punishment, I definitely recommend reading a newer version that has footnotes. I started off with the original Garnett version and had to put it down because the formatting was bad... I read a mix of the Pevear and Volokhonsky version and the Oliver Ready translation, and the footnotes honestly made it that much better. I've only recently started reading Russian Lit, so I was sorely lacking in background knowledge of the times
just wanted to say thank you for mentioning all these translators, as one I know how frequently we are forgotten and it’s just so good to see all these people being appreciated 🤍
I always think translation is such a fine art, particularly translating poetry which must be such a struggle to match meaning, style and technique for a new language. I've read a lot of poetry in translation over the last couple of years. I recommend Forough Farrokhzad's 'Another Birth: Selected Poems'. She was an Iranian poet and filmmaker who died in a car accident in 1967 aged only 32. But I found her poetry beautiful. Poetry is my joy these days.
I was watching your video and it is absolutely crazy because you mentioned how The Alienist was translated by Chasteen and my favorite and closest professor at school was a colleague of his and I frankly never thought I would hear of his works outside of class!
confessions by kanae minato is one of my favorite thrillers and it was translated from japanese to english. highly recommend! as always, your videos are just a comfort and i love your recommendations!
I’m from (the german part of) Switzerland so I read a lot of books in German, so here are a few recommendations: - Literally everything by Max Frisch (except “Andorra”). He’s from Switzerland and one of my favorite authors. I think “Homo Faber” is the most famous one and one of the most “normal” ones but at the same time it was the least relatable for me. So, I would recommend “I’m not Stiller” or “Gantenbein” (both about an existential crisis and they’re genius) or “Sketchbook 1966 - 1971” (really boring title but it was so interesting to read) or “Man in the Holocene” (about an old man living in a valley in the Tessin - south of the Alps, still in Switzerland but they already speak Italian - and it’s summer and it rains and it rains and he’s slowly losing his memory and he cuts out pieces of books and puts them on the walls to remember) or “The Arsonists” (“But the best camouflage of all - in my opinion - is the plain and simple truth. Because nobody ever believes it.”) - “The Rider on the White Horse” by Theodor Storm (I dream of travelling to northern Germany and to the Wadden Sea ever since I read that book but I never got around to it) - “The Buddenbrooks” by Thomas Mann (It’s a story about a family in the 19th century in northern “Germany”, which isn’t really Germany back then but it becomes it in the course of that century, and how they, well, go down. And I really adore Tony Buddenbrook’s character.) - Everything by Wolfgang Borchert. He experienced the second world war in Germany in his early 20’s and how completely destroyed the country was afterwards (that's why they call it “Trümmerliteratur”, "Trümmer" = debris) and his writing's just so incredibly beautiful and sad. (“The Man Outside” is translated but I don’t know about his short stories.) - “Dog Days” by Walter Kempowksi (it takes place in the most hot days in summer in the 80’s, right before summer’s ending, the "dog days", and it’s about a writer and what he experiences at that time and it’s funny in a way and he’s just describing society and he's doing … stuff and he himself definitely isn’t the most sympathetic character but anyway it’s great) - “Life of a Good-for-Nothing” by Joseph von Eichendorff (It’s part of the period of “Romantik” and it has all it’s elements and it’s just a really fun-beautiful read for a day in spring outside when you’ve got nothing to do) - “The Neverending Story” by Michael Ende (I know it’s a children’s book but I love it anyway and I love how much meaning it has for a fantasy story.) - “The City of Dreaming Books” by Walter Moers (Another fantasy story but I loved it just so much, the imagination is just superb. And, I mean, it's about books.) - “Felidae” by Akif Pirinçci (It’s abut a cat who solves a crime mystery and it gets very very dark and creepily horrible and it’s genius and I just loved it.) If you’re looking for something that makes you learn something about the country where it’s from, the last three books probably don’t give you that but they’re great anyway. And another book, the only one that’s not in German, but in Catalonian: “The Time of the Doves” by Mercè Rodoreda. Her writing is so incredibly beautiful and sad and unique and it somehow doesn’t get lost in the translation and this is one of the few books that actually really made me cry. And I really like her other works too. And I didn't know I was writing a novel when I started that comment lol. I must really like these books.
I recently finished a general systems theory class (which was really a philosophy of mind deep trip) and my professor chose to end our last lecture with Neruda's "The Enigmas", which I think you can find in that collection of poems you have - beautiful stuff! Oh, and if you feel like there's something off when reading The Alienist and Other Stories that's probably because of the translation - if you missed my last comment, the translation is a very literal one, it eliminates some figures of speech and because of that it's not too great at reproducing the original tone, it feels even a bit repetitive, sadly. That's a problem that the Posthumous Memoirs doesn't suffer from though, you're safe there! I think I might pick up Saramago soon, he's really popular here since we share a language. Anyway, that's a great collection Emma, hope it keeps on growing with literature from all over the world :)) take care!!
If you ever get into Turkish literature i’d recommend two books: Madonna in a Fur Coat (Kurk Mantolu Madonna) and The Disconnected (Tutunamayanlar) and honestly anything from Orhan Pamuk!
OK SO KAFKA'S TRIAL is just so depressive, yet perfect. I don't know what to say, it's just SO paradoxical, and twisted. Would recommend. You must read „Steppenwolf“ since I've stolen Harry's (the main character) personality.
Hey :) I'm a seventeen years old girl from Germany and this year I will have my A-levels (In Germany it is called Abitur) in German, English and French which is why I have to read a lot of novels. When it comes to German books, I highly recommend 'Steppenwolf' by Hermann Hesse. I'm going to analyse it in my final exam and I just wanted to recommend it to you as it offers so much room for discussion! Would love to hear your opinion on that special book! It's quite interesting and about a man having a huge mid-life crisis. He meets a young woman who represents hidden parts of his soul. In addition to that, he believes his soul is divided into two parts: The steppenwolf and the bourgeois. He also adores Mozart and Goethe and meets them in his dreams. I don't want to spoiler anything, but what I can tell you is that the end is quite shocking... Sorry for any grammar mistakes! Lots of love from the south of Germany x
It's best to start the Witcher from 'last wish', not 'blood of elves'. The two books of short stories are meant to be read before the main saga. Also from Poland I'd reccomend recent Nobel winner Olga Tokarczuk, aspecially 'primeval and other times'.
Grab Gustave Dores version of Dantes divine comedy! Paradise lost has Dore illustrations too. If you liked Flowers of evil, "Paris spleen" by Baudelaire is even better! I've been wanting to read Solaris is the book better than the movies?
i love rimbaud's poetry!!!!! you need to check out federico garcia lorca, a spanish xx century poet (between other things). His poems are amazing and they make you feel A LOT. And if you want to read something less known please check out the broken mirror by mercè rodoreda! I read it in high school, it was originally written in catalan and it's wonderful ( it's a generational story that depicts that moment's society perfectly, it is a modern classic)
have you read Grendel by John Gardner? it’s a really good story that’s kind of a twist on beowulf that gives grendels backstory and emotions. it’s so good and if you enjoy grendels character i think you’d love it :)
@@helenapupkess3192 Sure! Now I haven’t read “Hingede öö” myself yet so I really can’t give recommendations based on that but I’ll just mention some authors that I have personally really enjoyed. My favorite author is Andrus Kivirähk! I don’t know if you speak any other language than English but there’s a list of translations on Wikipedia for all languages so definitely check that out. Sadly there’s only one of his books translated to English which is “The Man Who Spoke Snakish” and honestly its my favorite book of all time. However if you happen to speak a language where “Rehepapp ehk November” has been translated to then maybe go trough it first? Imho it’s not as good but it’s shorter. He has a very specific humor + he literally comes up with the randomnest stuff so if you want to see if you understand his writing style then I think it’s good to check “November” out first. The second author is actually Finish-Estonian, Sofi Oksanen. Her book “Purge” is considered one of the best books of estonian literature written this century. For her I think a lot of her books have been translated. I haven’t read any of her other books but I think “When the Doves Disappeared” is her other most mentioned book maybe?? I recommend you check out this website estlit.ee, it’s about estonian literature but in English so in case these books don’t seem to be best fit then you can look for something that’s seems to fit your taste better. :)) Let me know how it goes, I’d be really interested to hear your opinions. And I’ll make sure to add “Hingede öö” in my TBR list. Lol I ended up writing so much, sorry!
The german name of the main character of "Castle in the clouds" by Kerstin Gier is Fanny Funke. I just learned that they changed the name in the english translation, which I find very weird as the name is not even that german.
Just finished my first class and then I found this :D, also, so excited for this video! I am looking for these kind of books, i want definitely read more about from around the world.
Orhan Pamuk will publish a new book, which he started writing 3 years ago and it is about the pandemic, I think you might also like it. Thank you for sharing your collection.
@@carlottamelfi Yes it is the mysterious part about the book, I watched his review on a news channel called T24, he stated that he had started writing about pandemic before pandemic had started. Such a coincidence!
You looks amazing ...... you inspire me to read books..... please can you make video on BTS Boyband books recommendation ... please tell if you like it
Wonderful collection of translated work. One of my favorite authors you covered was Mishima. After the Banquet is just a wonderful novel by him. My least favorite (of those I read) was Blindness. Not to curb your enthusiasm, but the book had . . . issues. I'd recommend adding Destiny and Desire by Carlos Fuentes to your translated fiction to-read list. It's narrated by a decapitated head floating in the ocean and is squarely in the realm of Magical Realism.
