Lydia Davis: preference

Transcript context

…Your motives. What do you get from it? I really just love foreign languages, which may sound a little dumb because it’s such a blanket statement, but even here at home, I find myself wanting to just break into German or French just for a second. I don’t know what it is. I obviously don’t tire of English because that’s my language. I write in it. I love it, but I love the sound of other languages. And also, as soon as you speak another language or read it, you enter a completely different culture and a completely different history, and I really love that. I do think sometimes that my first experience of another language made me want to translate the rest of my life. That was being in that Austrian classroom and not understanding anything anyone said, yet feeling that the surroundings were hospitable and friendly. It wasn’t an alienating experience. Then learning gradually what they were saying. I think I’ve wanted to repeat that, maybe, over and over. Do you think that reading fiction can be a better experience simply because you don’t understand the language as well as your own language?…

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