{"id":667,"date":"2010-01-09T08:49:57","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T12:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/?p=667"},"modified":"2010-01-09T08:49:57","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T12:49:57","slug":"reading-in-polish-translations-or-native-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/reading-in-polish-translations-or-native-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading in Polish – translations or “native” books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s stycze\u0144<\/strong> (January) now, dziewi\u0105ty<\/strong> (ninth) to be exact. Do you know where your postanowienia noworoczne<\/strong> (New Year\u2019s resolutions) are?<\/p>\n

Mine have already been claimed by the vicious vortex known as \u201creal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But maybe I should lead by example and come clean regarding my 2009 resolutions. Which were\u2026 Yeah, what were they? Ah yes! Czyta\u0107 wi\u0119cej ksi\u0105\u017cek po polsku<\/strong> \u2013 to read more books in Polish. Well, what I should have said was – \u201cprzeczyta\u0107 przynajmniej jedn\u0105 ksi\u0105\u017ck\u0119 po polsku<\/strong>\u201d \u2013 to read (and actually finish) at least ONE book in Polish.<\/p>\n

I don’t know whether it\u2019s my fault that I failed, or whether the books I picked were really that boring that reading them was a form of torture. In retrospect, I should have stuck to the classics. But even when I had \u201cKrzy\u017cacy<\/strong><\/em>\u201d already in my hand, watching the film proved just so much easier, not to mention – convenient, because it was being shown on TV right around that time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to list here the contemporary Polish writers whose books I attempted to read, because for all I know their works might be delightful to somebody else, and I don\u2019t want to label them unfairly as coma-inducing.<\/p>\n

As a last ditch effort I thought that reading something by my favorite author might fulfill my one book quota in Polish. And I didn\u2019t even care anymore that the book was actually a translation from English. I dug up my copies of \u201c\u0141ups\u201d<\/em><\/strong> (\u201cThud!<\/em>\u201d) and \u201cBogowie, honor, Ankh-Morpork\u201d<\/em><\/strong> (\u201cJingo\u201d<\/em>) and valiantly plunged in.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, I am a huge Terry Pratchett and Discworld fan. And I thought that by reading something that I already know and enjoy, it might make the experience that much more pleasurable. And as much as I would like to say that it was so, I can\u2019t. I gave up on the Polish translations very quickly.<\/p>\n

Now, please don\u2019t get me wrong. Those were both very good translations. The translator, Piotr Cholewa<\/strong> did a fabulous job. But unfortunately, he\u2019s not Terry Pratchett and a translation is and will always be just that \u2013 a translation.<\/p>\n

And that brings me to today\u2019s question. You see, I\u2019ve always advocated reading books in the language you are learning. And I\u2019ve always thought that reading translations of books that you already know might be easier and more fun. I\u2019ve done it myself in a couple of different languages and it seemed to work fine. Until I tried to read \u015awiat Dysku<\/strong> (Discworld) novels. Which leads me to believe that maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe sticking to books written by native speakers in their native languages is a better idea.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Are translations OK, or is it better to go the whole nine yards and instead of Polish versions of foreign books take the \u201csink or swim\u201d approach and pick up a 100% \u201cnative\u201d work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

It\u2019s stycze\u0144 (January) now, dziewi\u0105ty (ninth) to be exact. Do you know where your postanowienia noworoczne (New Year\u2019s resolutions) are? Mine have already been claimed by the vicious vortex known as \u201creal life.\u201d But maybe I should lead by example and come clean regarding my 2009 resolutions. Which were\u2026 Yeah, what were they? Ah yes!…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3128,2447,7600],"class_list":["post-667","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-reading","tag-translations"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}