I’m interested in reading Borges. My spanish is good enough for conversation & podcasts, but in my experience, literature often requires an additional vocabulary that I, as an only occasional reader, will gain at high cost but benefit from little.
So the question is: is it better to read a translation that maybe mimics the lexical richness of the original in a different language, or is it better to read a simplified version in the native language? I don’t mind grammatical complexity–which can be applied in conversation–it’s mostly the vocabulary that’s the problem.
Assume an actually advanced book that can be simplified.
Edit: Or maybe an e-reader with the original text and a built-in dictionary would be best? I just jailbroke my kindle.
I do what you say in your edit. Read in Spanish on a kindle and just look up the words you don’t know. If you’re conversational it should be fine. If you can’t figure out a word’s meaning from context and a dictionary entry you might have to only read the translation.
Personally I always go for reading it in the native language because translations usually suck butt.
For Borges specifically, I’ve only read it in translation (as someone who can only read English), but I feel like there’s enough nuance there that I’d prefer a translation. Maybe start by picking up a translation and a simplified version of a book in each language and see how it compares?
