A little before Christmas, Mig of eWritings tagged me with an interesting meme, one aimed at preventing people from wasting money on books that have no real value to offer them.

I’ve been lucky enough to have only bought books that either taught me something, or made me dream, or laugh, or think. I’ve never seen a book as a bad investment, unless I count some crappy text books. But those don’t count, as I didn’t exactly bought them because I really wanted to.

In order to complete the task, I thought of helping book lovers save money by offering advice that’s in the spirit of the meme, but doesn’t quite follow its guidelines to the letter. I hope Mig does not mind, as she means the world to me.

So here it goes: if you’re Romanian and want to buy a translated book but speak the language it was written it, don’t waste your money! Buy the original version through Amazon of whatever comes to mind and read it. It will save it quite some disappointment.

Bare in mind we’re not talking fiction here! Most of those books are a great read in Romanian as well. There are exceptions, but insignificant ones. When it comes to non-fiction, the saga begins! I’ve played with business, PR and marketing books that were translated from English and some fragments really scratched my soul and mind!

Besides, if you’re trying to learn things on you’re own, you might not get the essence of what’s said. For example, both publicity and advertising are translated as “publicitate” in Romanian. If you don’t know the difference and read a PR book, you might feel dizzy after the first 50 pages.

Yes, it might take longer to get the book. I doubt the book and the shipment will cost more than the original version. But at least you’ll get the author’s actual message.

Caveats

• Advanced knowledge (or better yet proficiency) of said language is required
• having the original boook won’t help if you’re trying to jump directly to doctorate level Maths but know squad about Maths to begin with.

Who to tag? If you ever bought a book and regreted it, consider yourself part of this meme!

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