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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm picking up al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke. It's more scholarly and less popular than expected. The title apparently means that for all the woke signalling being done, actual wokeness is more about appearances and ambition than anything.
I just started Jane Austen’s Emma. I’ve been meaning to read more ”proper” books for a while and I recently watched and loved Clueless (1995) which turns out to be a very well regarded modernized adaptation of Emma to a 90s high school setting. Thus getting an annotated ebook seemed a natural choice (for the high, high, price of $4.50). Wish me luck, lol.
Some googling for translations has also revealed an interesting example of elitism in literary circles. People recoil at the very idea that someone would translate older English language Classics to modern late 1900s / 2000s English and tell you to just suck it up with the overly complicated sentence structure and completely changed meaning of words. However translating to a foreign language - which throws the sentence structure to wind and streamlines it significantly - is somehow perfectly fine. Goddamn elitists…
Checking in.
If you can't read Austen you aren't really literate in English. Annotations are fine, adaptations are fine, but you should be able to read it without some Reader's Digest bowdlerization of it.
I guess I'm not really literate then. Of course, I assume this means that you in turn can read eg. Dostoevsky in the original Russian editions without problems, right? Afterall, by your measure anything else would be "bowdlerization".
And just to be clear, I'm not talking about some "simple English" version but simply updating those words and terms that have changed their meanings in the last 200 years (and there are enough that the first chapter alone has 34 foonotes!) and making minor changes to some of the overly complex sentence structure so you don't have to keep a dozen different things in mind just to be able to parse a single sentence.
But more to the point I simply cannot understand this view where nobody, not even non-native speakers, should be allowed to have an easier to read version available for them that stays authentic to the original's spirit and it would be better that all those people simply not read at all such books.
Or, more precisely, Dostoevsky with dialogues jumping between original Russian, French, English, and German. His upper-class characters jump between the four languages in their conversations, as they would in real life at the time. No properly-educated young lady would speak Russian without at least a hint of a French accent.
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As far as I'm aware, the only changes to the original Dostoevsky (and contemporary authors) that are present in the editions you can read now are grammar changes - that is, updating the 19th century spelling, full of i's and ъ's, to the grammar USSR and modern Russia share.
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I don't claim to be literate in Russian. You got me there.
Because with a little effort, one can read Austen in the original, and by struggling through one or two such books in the original, one can learn to read them. And by doing so one unlocks the entire history of the English language. And such efforts are what keeps the entire concept of the English language stable and keeps it from drifting permanently into low slang and ebonics.
Languages are defined and anchored by the great works of literature that the literate members of the linguistic group are expected to read and understand. Dante in Italian, Homer for the Greeks, Virgil in Latin, Goethe in German. The English that God has blessed us with has remained remarkably stable from Shakespeare to today. I can attend a Shakespeare play and with a little inference from context clues get what is being said.
But this process requires collective effort to maintain. And when we create shortcuts, like "updating" Austen's language, we destroy that effort, we would permanently cut off that part of our heritage. We would be left with people unable to read the Declaration, the Federalist Papers, John Stuart Mill, the Gettysburg Address.
We've already mostly lost this to wokeness and ignorance, with the literary canon in tatters. For decades every American public high school student was forced to read Shakespeare at least a little to pass, now it's been replaced with modern identitarian garbage. Was there ever a time where the majority of Americans could read the Great Books? Maybe not, but there existed a literate culture that could. We're in danger enough of losing that as it is, and maybe it's all irrelevant in the age of AI. But it was a beautiful thing while it lasted.
So please, leave me Austen.
87 years ago, our forefathers founded a new country based on liberty and equality. Now we are at war with ourselves in a test of whether our nation, or one like it, can survive. We gather on a battlefield of that war to dedicate a cemetery for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our nation, as is proper. However, there is little we can do, as it has already been consecrated by those who fought here. No one will remember this ceremony, but no one will forget the battle. Now we must use their deaths as motivation to finish the job and guarantee the future of democratic government.
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Let's not get carried away here - reading Shakespeare will help you with reading Old English approximately not at all.
I should have specified modern English, roughly Shakespeare to today, but I felt that would be more confusing than useful.
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Frankly, I don't care about the "history of English language". Neither do I care about "[your] heritage". I am afterall not English (or anglo- anything).
I simply want to read a few classic books in versions that don't require constantly jumping back and forth for no good reason or require using translations that can't capture the meaning of the original, being simultaneously both inaccurate and sounding archaic in precisely the wrong way (ie. many Finnish translations from 1940s and 50s). I don't see how making a new entirely optional version aimed at modern and foreign readers would somehow erase the existence of the original, particularly given that it's out of copyright and can't thus be removed from the market (like happens with movies). This isn't about "proving my literateness". I just want to read the book so that it's actually enjoyable instead of a chore.
Contrast the first paragraph of the original:
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."
with the only available Finnish translation (translated back to English and differences to the original bolded):
"Emma Woodhouse was beautiful, intelligent and rich; She had a comfortable home and happy disposition; She seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence. She had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with nothing to meaningfully distress or anger her."
and with something close to what I'd prefer:
"Emma Woodhouse was beautiful, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, and seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; She had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."
Do you really think that people should have to read the second instead of the third when the first is not an option?
But the quality of the prose is the entire reason to read Austen in the first place. If you're going to throw out all her original language, why not just go watch Clueless instead? If the basic plot and themes of Emma are what you want, there are dozens of adaptations out there that will be much easier to consume than the original. You could always buy the Young Illustrated Classics edition. That's how I was originally exposed to much of the English canon as a child.
Austen was a beautiful and wickedly sharp prose stylist. It's worth slowing down and trying to appreciate it.
Mostly it seems like your problem is with the quality of Finnish translations. I'd rather the publishers work on improving the literary quality of their translated works than spend resources producing simpler English language versions.
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If you don't care about me or my heritage, I don't see why I have to care about you or your convenience. If you want an easy reading for the non-native English speaker, read it in translation, which you've pointed out exists and is easier for you.
I don't really see how the third is a massive improvement over the first. The first simply seems to be an option to me, and I'm comfortable with the idea of gatekeeping here. By putting in the effort to read the first, you can easily come to understand the sentence structure and the meaning of the word "handsome" in context, which will help you read other works in the same period without needing translation. With a modicum of effort, these things evaporate for you.
I, of course, will never have a meaningful opinion on Homer or Tolstoy by my own standard. Awkward, as those are some of my favorite works, and I have an effortpost on them in the hopper, but alas. I am not perfect.
You don't. All I ask is that you not actively try to prevent me. Yet you keep claiming that I must read it the original way.
I would if a high quality translation existed. It does not exist. See example #2 that I linked.
Yes, for a native it may not be. For a non-native like me it's a significant improvement in readability.
Again, I do not care about this. I'm not doing this for some school course or bragging rights. All I want is to read the book so it's enjoyable to me.
Why are you trying to force me to do something I do not want and that has absolutely no effect on you? Why are you so much against people simply enjoying literature if they do not do it exactly as you prefer? You don't have to read it. All I ask is that people like me be allowed to read a version we prefer without ridiculous gatekeeping and personal attacks.
Seriously, all this does is further the impression that literature buffs are gatekeeping assholes who care more about some weird concept of purity than that people actually enjoy literature.
How exactly am I preventing you from doing so? If such a modernized abridged Austen existed, I wouldn't go to the Barnes and noble at the mall with my buddies from jiu jitsu and take every copy and throw it in the river.
I (and those similarly situated and opinionated) would probably vaguely sneer at it as degenerate or childish. I would probably judge someone negatively for reading it if I saw it, the same way I judge people I see reading Bill o Reilly "killing" books or White Fragility or Heated Rivalry. Maybe if I got worked up I'd write a tweet or a substack essay or an effort post about it, but probably not. I would view such a thing as a slippery slope towards the English speaking peoples, my people, being estranged from our own heritage. That would not lead me to violent action, I am after all not Italian, but I would sneer and gatekeep.
Given that you know that such would be my reaction, your objection seems to be that the possibility of that sneering prevents such a work from being published? But why should I withhold judgment of something I believe would harm my cultural heritage to enhance your convenience?
Gatekeeping is good, actually.
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