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/lit/ - Literature

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17136014 No.17136014 [Reply] [Original]

When I’m reading in my native language (portuguese) I always come across bizarre new words and expressions. Happens on every page. Yet when I’m reading in English this rarely happens, even though my vocabulary in Portuguese is much vaster. I don’t know if this means English is a bit more limited or if English translators and writers are more reasonable in their choice of words, but it’s weird that it’s easier for me to read Thomas Mann in English than in Portuguese. In Portuguese you can find countless obscure synonyms for every common word and translators and writers have no inhibition when it comes to employing all of them in the same paragraph, especially when they can add some poeticism that wasn’t in the original work

>> No.17136107

>>17136014
1.Go read the Faerie Queenie
2.Come back here

>> No.17136121

>>17136014
read milton or mccarthy.

>> No.17136132

>>17136014
There are fewer Portuguese translators than English ones which means the English ones can take fewer liberties with the translation, as they would be constantly compared to the other translations.

>> No.17136322

I'm Lithuanian and I relate hard. Russian is pretty good too. In English I feel there is so little space for stylization, while I can switch around words in sentences, use old words, make up new words etc. and it all means something. English just comes out more dry(dryer?) however you write.

>> No.17136584

>>17136014
>>17136322
This is weird because English has a lot more synonyms and alternative words than all of these languages and a writing culture of avoiding using the same words even if it means using a word no one has ever used in the language.

>> No.17136605

>>17136014
It means your mind reflects English modernity and not Latinate pre-mid twentieth century cu!ture.

>> No.17136651

>>17136014
I'm also portuguese and reading philosophy in portuguese is just straight up undecipherable because it's more of an exercise in portuguese language then the actual ideas presented in the text. I actually hated philosophy during highschool until I started reading it in english and realised I could actually understand things

>> No.17137551

8000+ Portuguese books
https://mega.nz/file/HgcCkaLC#VNHuRWTbOrcqxMblhb4HKT2Ewono_hlVGDULlDZL27o

>> No.17137562

>>17136014
I'm German and can relate to the Mann thing. When I read Zauberberg I discovered a lot of new words and expressions.

Also are you Portuguese or from Brazil? I guess the countless synonyms come from being a pluricentrical language with lots of local slang

>> No.17137564

>>17136651
that's because you don't know the grammar

>> No.17137593

>>17136014
>even though my vocabulary in Portuguese is much vaster.

Maybe that is not true? I know some guys who practically live in the internet and they have better English than their native language. Are you from a workers background? Maybe your Portuguese is proletarian and your English is smaller but more complex.

>>17136107
Not OP but this looks good, I want to read more old English anyway. So thx.