According to Sweden, we're not worldly enough. American writers are too "insular," said a spokesperson for the Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, there is some truth to this. I mean, we are known to think only of ourselves and read ourselves. See articel here.
I'd been involved in conversations about our bad reading habits when it comes to foreign literature. Only 3 percent of books we get in America are translated--this leads us to reading works written only English. We don't get a lot of translations for books originally written in French, Spanish, Chinese, German, Japanese, etc.
What's worse is that translated works rarely get reviewed because critics don't know if they're reviewing a great book with a bad translation or vice versa.
For my part, I'm reading a book that was originally written in Burmese. Cool, huh?
About Me
- the last noel
- Actor, Los Angeles Times Beststelling Author, Buddhist Pastor
2 comments:
Frankly, and I hate to be a total show-off here, I think it's a good idea to learn other languages...read books in their original diction.
I can do it in French. I want to be able to do it in German. I think I will one day.
Of course, there are AMAZING translations out there. What a skill! To translate well!
Probably also a product of America's lack of foreign language skills. I'll bet that the vast majority of Americans who speak a language in addition to English do so because English is their second language.
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