Ask any bibliophile and they’ll tell you: Reading is all about transporting oneself. It’s a learning experience, where we can take our consciousness and drop it somewhere else for a while. With fiction, in particular, we can visit new places or time periods, or experience things that would be otherwise impossible. In the same vein, though, reading can help us experience things that are entirely ordinary and commonplace—to someone else. It’s all about experiencing something new or different, which makes reading a perfect exercise in empathy. So why do we often limit ourselves to reading authors with experiences and culture similar to our own?
Bestsellers in countries like America are often written and published by Americans, if you can believe it. In fact, 9 out of the 10 bestselling fiction authors of all time were either American, British, or English, and their works were originally published in English. (The one oddball was Belgian author Georges Simenon, who wrote in French.) Out of the approximately 6,900 languages listed in SIL International‘s Ethnologue, two languages seems like absolute chump change.
Of course, there are barriers to reading books that were originally written in another language. Not everyone who speaks English also speaks Spanish or French or Korean, but many of the most popular novels in foreign countries receive English translations. You might not speak Spanish, but someone else does, and may have already done the grunt work for you! Translated texts come with their own complications, such as different grammar rules or localizations, but those risks can be outweighed by the content of the novel itself. After all, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, originally published in French, is the fourth best-selling book of all time, followed by Dream of the Red Chamber, written by Cao Xueqin and originally published in eighteenth-century China.
We only get one trip around this great, wide planet of ours, but readers have cashed in on a special coupon—two for the price of one. If we expand our horizons, if we decide to immerse ourselves in a culture unlike our own, maybe we’ll discover that it isn’t so different after all.
To help kick-start your journey into translated novels, here are a few recommendations in Spanish, French, and German.
Spanish:
French:
- Tram 83 by Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila
- Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau
German:
Breanna Dittert
Student Representative, High Plains Region, 2021-2022
Sigma Sigma Chapter
Southwestern College in Winfield, Winfield, KS
Sigma Tau Delta
Sigma Tau Delta, International English Honor Society, was founded in 1924 at Dakota Wesleyan University. The Society strives to
- Confer distinction for high achievement in English language and literature in undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies;
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- Serve society by fostering literacy.
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