I decided to read this beautiful book in Spanish. Here is my approach.

First, I read the book in my native language – Bulgarian. I wanted to be sure that I would like the book and it would be interesting for me. I didn’t know anything about Carlos Ruiz Safón or about the book itself. Therefore, I was a little bit sceptic. However, the book really grabbed me and I read it very quickly. During the reading, I try to mention to myself words, phrases or whole passages that would be difficult to me. As a result, I realized that in the book there are many truly poetic descriptions of Barcelona (full with new words), many words, describing the manner of talking (like “whispering”, etc.). It would be challenging but useful for me to read this book in Spanish.

Second, I started to think about my approach. I was reading some books in foreign languages but very differently. Some books I read it without dictionary in English, just for fun. Some other books I read it in Kindle with its dictionaries. Other books I read them with searching for new words in dictionaries, making notes, etc. At the end, I decided a new approach – to try to read the book in all my targeted languages simultaneously. I was made something similar with my last book but I used paper copies and paper dictionaries. My notes were not in one place and there was no connection between words and phrases of my languages. It was not a real simultaneous reading but reading a chapter in Spanish, then reading another chapter in English, then reading this chapter in Bulgarian, etc. It was good for a book without a plot or many characters. Now I decided to make a table with 5 columns in Word – for each language – Spanish, Italian, English, Bulgarian and Portuguese. After fine-tuning, the text was synchronized and I started to read it, part by part, in Spanish, than same text in Italian (but now I reference Italians and Spanish words), etc. I marked new words, phrases, and interesting expressions with colours and add notes in comments (like in Journaly). In addition, I made a vocabulary list – a table with 5 columns – to add corresponding words in these languages. I preferred to make it in paper because I wanted to add notes in the back of each page for each language with different colour. I like to write a lot but maybe it would be better if I revise these notes and put them into a file. I search for new words and phrases in online dictionaries but I check also phrases in paper dictionaries. I also use DRAE, María Moliner and Zanichelli (Spanish-Italian).

In the end, I finished first chapter in Spanish and I have listed about 160 new words and phrases. Some of favourite words of the author are reluz, penumbra, ceniza, alba, tiniebla, sombre, arder. The most difficult parts of the text for me are the descriptions of the town in any language. For me is quite interesting to search for some literature words like “reluz”. It is a slow approach but for me is an essential. I try to notice differences of spelling like guirnalda (esp.), grinalda (port.) , ghirlanda (it.), гирлянда (бълг.) or cementerio (esp.), cemitério (port.), cimitero (it.), cemetery (eng.). In addition, I will try to extract some useful words, which will help me in further readings.

I hope my thoughts would be useful for someone!