Cien años de soledad

What Hacker News says

1. FlyingSnakeJun 2025
   This is such a sad and utilitarian take.

   I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many languages as possible. I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.

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2. lddMay 2015
   I am a firm believer that one should spend at least 10 or 20 years learning French and then read Les Miserables and Le Compte de Monte-Cristo.

   The same could be said about La sombra del viento, 100 años de soledad or Neruda's poems in Spanish.

   In English, only Virginia Woolf inspires the same awe for language that these other books impregnated in me.

   In some sense, these authors don't use words. They let words use them.

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3. 3amApr 2014
   Oh no... GGM was an underappreciated author in non-spanish speaking world (in spite of wonderful, gift translators... he was just an intrinsically difficult author to translate because of the poetic quality of his writing IMHO). Cien Anos de Soledad was one of the first non-trivial, non-english books I read. RIP.

   edit: okay, removed 'really'.. I think he was underappreciated on a popular level, even though he was very well appreciated on a critical level.

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4. lou1306Mar 2026
   My problem with that problem is that, well, people who have kids definitionally know (better?) about having them. Like being able to experience a book in its original version vs a translation.

   It's okay if you don't want to learn Spanish, but when people discuss the struggles and delights of reading Cien Años de Soledad they're not necessarily being arrogant, just stating their lived experience.

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5. hiAndrewQuinnJun 2025
   >I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel.

   This is an interesting point where our experiences totally differ. I have myself read a few classics in both original and translation, between the English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate, such as Cien Años de Soledad as you mentioned. I percieved little if any drop in quality between Marquez and the translation - indeed I often thought the translated work was superior to the original. It's not a classic in the same vein, but I similarly found the modern Latin translations of Harry Potter were much more fun than the original English prose, which even as a kid felt very workaday and even uninspired at times to me.

   So I see this more as evidence that you put a very high aesthetic value on linguistic purism than anything else. You don't just want the thing, you like working really hard to get the original thing. You like pushing the boulder up that hill. To be clear, I consider that an extremely commendable character trait, I just also think it means you're living on another planet compared to most of the population. Which isn't a bad thing, it's nice here.

   >I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way.

   It may be a sacrifice you're happy to make, but you are absolutely making some kind of large tradeoff every time you invest 500-1500 hours into learning a new language to C1 level, man. Like come on. That's like the economic definition of an opportunity cost.

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6. azangruJun 2025
   > I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.

   I wouldn't call reading Dostoevski fun in any language (and I did read it in Russian) :-)

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