The OF Blog: What I have read so far by language

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

What I have read so far by language

As of this moment (which will change shortly, as I have books in Spanish, Italian, and German that I'm in various stages of reading and which may be finished tonight or tomorrow), I have read (either unassisted or through the use of a parallel text for those languages that I know at least some words yet wouldn't consider myself to be reading fluent in) the following amounts in each language:

English - 194 books
Spanish - 48 books
Italian - 19 books
French - 17 books
Serbian - 11 books
Portuguese - 9 books
German - 9 books
Catalan - 2 books
Latin - 2 books
Polish - 2 books (with parallel texts read)
Romanian - 2 books
Galician - 1 book
Venetian - 1 book
Irish - 1 book (parallel text read)
Hungarian - 1 book (parallel text read)
Persian - 1 book (parallel text read)
Russian - 1 book (parallel text read)
Basque - 1 book (parallel text read)
Quechua - 1 book (parallel text read)
Lithuanian - 1 book (parallel text read)
Czech - 1 book (parallel text read)
Zulu - 1 book (parallel text read)

22 languages, 326 total books, 132 of which are not in English.  Should be noted that the total number of languages drops to 13 if I were to exclude translations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince.  But I don't exclude those.  Hope to get the non-English books/translations read to 150 by year's end.  Further goals are to read at least 52 books in Spanish/Spanish translation, 25 in Italian/Italian translation, 25 in French/French translation, 12 in German/German translation, 12 in Serbian/Serbian translation, and 12 in Portuguese/Portuguese translation.  Each of these are very feasible goals as I have set aside books in each of those languages to read over the next six weeks or so.

And yes, if I reach these ambitious goals, my team of Serbian reading squirrels will receive a bonus.

4 comments:

Nikki (www.bookpunks.com) said...

Daaaamn. I'm impressed.

Larry Nolen said...

It's taken a dozen years to get to this point, so it's more hard work than anything else.

Ray Garraty said...

What are your main difficulties while you're reading in Russian?

hanzel said...

The importance of a German translation being accurate and efficient can indeed not be overstated. Especially in the ever faster moving world of globalized business, successful information and technology transfer within multinational businesses can make the difference between win or lose.

 
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