lately i’ve been thinking about something and wanted to see if anyone else relates. i’m bilingual (spanish-english), spanish is my native language, but over the past few years i feel like i’m losing vocabulary in my own language because of all the english content i consume on a daily basis. i’ve been trying to make up for this by reading more books in spanish. now here comes my dilemma. because of the type of content i consume, the books i end up getting recommended are usually originally written in another language, mostly english. and lately i feel like when i pick up a translation, i end up feeling like something is missing, like something got lost along the way, and i end up not enjoying the reading because i keep thinking about how it would have felt to read it in english, or whatever the original language actually was. this happens to me a lot with korean literature, for example. i know very well how that language can become immensely poetic, so i read the spanish translations and i’m left wondering whether i’m really getting the message the author meant to express with their book.

i know the obvious answer to my predicament would be “read more spanish speaking authors,” and you’d be completely right (though that doesn’t erase the fact that there are many authors i’d love to read who unfortunately don’t speak my language). the problem is, as i mentioned, that i don’t have many recommendations in that department (unless they’re the usual classics).

so i’m asking you all, if you’re bilingual or multilingual, has something similar happened to you? do you feel like you lose something when reading translations, even good ones? and while i’m at it, could you recommend contemporary spanish speaking authors worth exploring? right now i’m open to any genre as long as it doesn’t have trigger warnings.