About books and their translations

I realize I have spent a lot of my time writing about videogames here, and not focusing much on most of my other hobbies. I guess I just want to ramble about something different today, so why not?

The other day I saw a post on a reading group I found in some mainstream social media platform that shall remain unnamed, and it was all about how great The Night Land and The House on The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson were, but what I found most intriguing was how many people were fans of these works, even though the community and the post were in Spanish.

Most of the people leaving comments and praising those books were reading translations of the original work, and using adapted names for the books and such.

I am quite happy that there are so many great works available in my native language. However, that also stresses me out.

I just can’t decide what to do when it comes to translated works at all. Be it old books in English translated to Spanish—or modern ones to be fair. And what about Spanish books that I could read in English, or picking between Spanish and English for books that are in a completely different language?

It shouldn’t be hard, I read like five of Jules Verne’s books in Spanish and I absolutely loved them when I was younger! Same for H.G. Wheels and a other books translated from works in other languages!

I think I just take issue with deciding when my options are doubled. And taking into account how language and writing styles also evolve over the decades or even centures, I just end up with decision paralysis.

Back when I still didn’t write reviews on this blog, I picked up The Stranger by Albert Camus, and I absolutely devoured it, it was a read that took me only two days to complete. However, it was not the original in Frech, it was an English translation (and I’m not even sure of which translation I read). This is not something I realized until just today. But it doesn’t change the fact that the book was incredible and impossible to put down for me! So translations must be alright, right?

After all, soon after The Stranger I somehow decided it would be a good idea to read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a book published in 1897… and it was a total pain!

There were so many strange words, grammar structure I didn’t quite understand, but I pushed through it and I ended up really enjoying it, and full of pride too, for I sticked to it consistently until the very end!

However, Dracula is a great book with a story that glued me to the pages. How will it be for other works with old English that may not keep me as interested as if I just read the translation? This could be a big problem for me, and because of this, I am unsure of how to proceed.

When it comes to Science Fiction, a lot of terms such as Cyborg, Steampunk or DoubleSpeak just don’t hit the same when translated, ending up with hacky words that make me cringe a little bit, at least in older works.

Original books by Spanish-speaking writers also hit different! When I read Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica—an Argentine writer—I simply had to switch to the original language after three or so chapters. The translation just felt way too dry and straight to the point to me, and the wonderful flourishes the Spanish language expressed were a very welcome surprise when I switched. The story was absolutely horrifying in the most amazing way and I finished it in a single sitting as the dystopian trainwreck of its plot just kept going.

It should be clear by now that I guess I prefer to read the original language if possible, but it does seem like I could be perfectly happy reading the translation if I get over myself or if I am ignorant of the existence of an original, I guess.

Jules Verne is French, so both English and Spanish aren’t the original, and I’ll probably stick to Spanish if I ever reread it. I do notice that most printed editions are based on old translations though, which comes with its own caveats, such as changing whole names and even chapters because why not. I wonder if reading Verne in English would be better… Or just a modern Spanish translation.

And don’t get me started on Latino vs European Spanish… I actually read like five chapters of Abbadon’s Gate and well, yeah definitely not the accent I imagined when I think of these characters speaking. Nothing against my Spaniard friends, just personal preference. Perhaps the cursing in Spanish also felt weird to me and older works with would be okay and even kind of epic to read in old Spanish style.

Some of the works I want to read next will also have to be translations. One I’m looking at right now is Solaris and The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem, which seems to be beloved in the Spanish reading group I found, though I wonder if it will be affected by the word choices Sci-Fi tends to have, and maybe choosing English for that one will be better for me, or not!

Of course, The Illiad and The Odyssey are also in my head, and as very old works, they have a huge list of available translations and editions. A dozen in Spanish, and who knows how many in English. I kind of want to go for Spanish, though I am extremely curious about how many more choices I’d have in English too.

Something that also worries me for the future, is AI-generated translations… A part of me wants to believe that maybe this is one of the generally useful uses for it, but I think that they may end up just ruining it all again. We are starting to see it everywhere, from ugly book covers to non-existing authors.

Still, I don’t want to think about that, it just came up on its own. For now I’ll just focus on reading a bunch of those old sci-fi on my digital and physical library, and perhaps wether original or translated, know that there is people with heart who have put effort into making these works accesible, and people who are still eager to read and talk about these works with enthusiasm to this day.

That conclusion seems a bit out of nowhere after I just rambled for a dozen paragraphs about how indecisive I am, let’s call it a day shall we? And of course let me know your thoughts about this all.

This is day 12 of #100DaysToOffload and day 7 of #Blaugust2026