Choosing a translated text: a polyglot’s conundrum

I have a recurring problem that floors me each time I walk into a bookstore with the purpose of finding inspiration as to what to read when my never-ending “to be read” list either starts dwindling down to just a few titles or worse yet doesn’t seem to satisfy the elusive and frankly vague feeling of wanting something new. This listlessness or ennui thankfully doesn’t assail me often but when it does it is a cantankerous beast to deal with. 

I was doing just that the other day, perusing the shelves, literally choosing books by their covers, and snapping pictures to remember them by, because well, I have a confession – I rarely buy physical books anymore. 

Oh the shame! 

I know. 

Truth is, I’ve accumulated a quantity of books that is cumbersome at best, and a veritable nightmare whenever I have to move house, so I’ve embraced the convenience of an e-reader, especially at my no-longer-a-spring-chicken life stage when patience for small prints and heavy books in my bag has flown the coop.

In my defense, and in an attempt to lure you back in, if you now deem me a traitor of all that is holy in the reading world, I often buy actual, real, tangible, paper books as gifts. Also I try to buy at least a little something on my outings to the bookstore to forage for future material. Hope that makes it better. 

Another reason why I rarely buy physical books is that I (and this is really the point of this post) mostly try to read in the original language the author used. Unfortunately, but understandably a local bookstore in a small town in Italy doesn’t have that kind of selection. 

And this leads to the heart of the matter: what does one do when faced with a book originally penned in a language they don’t speak, necessitating reliance on a translation?

I feel like I need a second brief disclaimer here, seeing as I’m a translator and it’s sounds like I’m discrediting translations. I’m not. Nevertheless, the allure of reading a work in its original language is undeniable.  This doesn’t mean that translations are bad quality or worse than the original, in fact I’ve read translations that were actually BETTER, but that’s not the point. 

Anyway, I’m rambling, I know. (Am I ever going to get to the point?)

So back to my story, I’m picking up books, reading synopses, deciding if I’m interested etc.  And I find this book by Yangsze Choo, “The Ghost Bride” and I read on the cover that the author is Malaysian of Chinese descent and I immediately go down an oh so familiar rabbit hole of: what language was this book written in originally? Probably Malaysian? Or Chinese? Either way, a translation might be my only option.

This dilemma particularly plagues polyglots when selecting a translated book—how does one decide the language to read it in? My choice is generally relatively straightforward, I opt for the most structurally or culturally similar language with the same root (so Romance languages that I don’t speak I’ll read in Italian or French, Germanic languages I read in English etc.). Yet, what about languages of vastly different origins from the ones I speak?

I don’t actually have an answer, let’s be honest, I doubt there are that many of us who sit around overthinking about languages when picking a book to read. 

When push comes to shove, I’ll end up reading whatever version was either translated by someone I know or know of and consider a reputable translator or I’ll read it in English if I’m being lazy or I’ll choose whichever language I’ve read the least that year with a note of consideration to cultural similarities between the original and the translation language (for example, I’ll read Greek authors in Italian but Russian authors in French). 

There’s an embarrassing epilogue to this story however, and I never shrink from sharing embarrassing episodes (though I should, right?). 

After possibly too much searching (which included dming the author on instagram) I realized that the book was actually originally written in English. 

So basically this post and the past two days of my life were a very real example of much ado about nothing.