I read "Barchester Towers" by Anthony Trollope in the original now. This one, by the way, is maybe his only novel translated to Russian, although it is the second in the series after "The Warden", but is considered his best. I read in English, and am obsessed with the refinement of speech. Although I can not boast that I know English as a native speaker. Of course, I meet a huge number of unfamiliar words. But only if I do not understand the context or I really want to understand the moment in full, the idea of the author, I check the dictionary.
Sometimes there are things that can not be translated. For example, when it is written about the Oxford graduate that he was not good enough for one of the colleges, but fit for another. By origin, by wealth, by status in society, by education received earlier, by political views ...?! Perhaps this moment would be obvious to any Englishman, but I do not know the difference between these colleges ... and explanatory footnotes are provided only in translations into other languages. But on the other hand it does not affect the rest of the personality characteristics, so I do not need to get stuck on such things. Although it is interesting.
What I want to note in reading the work in the original is this difference in the structure of speech. Those turns of speech, the twists which I came across and smiled with pleasure, more often in Russian translation would loose all their beauty. Since it was the grammatical structure of English that allowed these turns.
But I also do not read works the way I did when we went through the school program. Then more important was not the beauty of presentation, not the wit of the author and the confusion of situations in which he placed the characters, but remembering what happened. Then we rather trained the memory on these volumes ... "war and peace" ... Although gradually the attitude to loved and unloved heroes, to good and bad deeds, to their perception and development was formed.
Reading translated literature now... won't fly for my purposes. Although I suspect that those schoolchildren who missed the school stage of understanding literature would now start with the tasks that I decided for myself earlier. The development of memory and moral, a set of vocabulary and the ability to express their thoughts. I have to admit that such people in society can be seen with the naked eye and they are ... "95%". Sometimes you give a frustrated sigh, meeting another example, who has already lived to retirement and did not understand that to be able to talk is not only to know the meaning of words and expressions.
And I will write about what I have noticed for myself when reading "Barchester Towers" separately, since this is another story (with spoilers) :)
