A substantial portion of the intricate language and analysis of Lenin’s work is lost in any translation. Russian is an extraordinarily difficult language to translate and I find reading most of the Soviet or Eastern European theory in Russian has given me a deeper understanding of the theory then the English versions.
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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I would absolutely love to learn Russian and it might be the easiest language to pick up since I already speak a slavic language.
Most are available in English. Also the theories in my native language are usually translated from English sources instead of the source language (German, Russian etc.). That's why there's a regular chance of misinterpretation via the game of telephone.
Actually never thought of that before that it might be even worse to read a double translated text.
i prefer my best-known language, that being Italian, but considering the anglophone nature of most of the world, i usually read everything in english, so i can communicate more effectively (although i still am not particularly adept in exposition and teaching others ><)
My native language is Spanish, but I read it in English. I tried reading it in Spanish but it uses "fancy" vocabulary that isn't common in daily life so I had a hard time understanding
Similar issue here, "fancy" vocabulary is not something that is used in day to day speak here so using those words doesn't articulate the ideas/concepts well to most people.
What should have been my native language is instead at about a professional-conversational level where doing translations is still out of reach. Maybe in a year. I'm very embarrassed about it. I still switch to English when I want full comprehension & not to be slowed down.
I read it both in English and in Dutch (my native language). I have a better grasp on the concept, how to explain them and visualize them in English than in Dutch.
What is your native language if I may ask, why would you have trouble with translating them?
Not willing to share that info, but let's just say it's pretty difficult to go back and forth sometimes as I don't know the proper translations of words or even concepts.
That is pretty hard ya, especially more scientific terms
I am better at understanding it in english than german, even Marx and Engels haha. Most of my knowledge in general, especially revolutionary knowledge, has been built on english and some of the terms i have never seen in german lol
If, the text available in Turkish I would go for it to practice my mother tongue otherwise English.
Translations into my native language are hard to come by. So i usually read either in German or English. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The English translation tends to be more compact and faster to understand since the grammatical construction is simplified, but the German has more nuance. I would like to be able to read it in Russian as well one day.