Monday Musings: Books In Translation

Welcome to Monday Musings!  This is a weekly feature where each Monday I'll post a  topic for you to share your thoughts and opinions. I would like to thank those of you who participated last week, and in particular, thank you to Natalie of Fill Your Bookshelf for sharing those wonderful pod cast links!

This week's topic for discussion is Books In Translation...

This past week I finished reading  Room No.10 By  Åke Edwardson; a mystery/crime fiction novel originally published in Swedish and is soon to be released in English (For my complete review, click here).  Apparently, the author has received a great deal of praise in his homeland as well as other European countries.  Of course, I was immediately intrigued and wanted to discover this highly-acclaimed author for myself.  Throughout the novel, I found myself easily frustrated with sentence fragments and an overall "choppy" feel to the flow of the novel.  Was this intentional? Or is this a matter of poor translation? Or perhaps, a cultural issue?  Or a combination of all?

Over the years, I have read several books that have been translated but have never experienced such a level of frustration (with the exception of reading Kafka in graduate school and that's a topic in and of itself).  I expect something to be lost in the translation process and I feel that's just a given when reading a translation in general. With personal experience with Mandarin Chinese, I know there are times when a translated equivalent just isn't available and thus, substituting and improvising with near equivalents becomes unavoidable.  But, I still expect a certain level of quality from the translation itself. 

So, what I'd like to know is, what has your experience been with books in translation?  Do you feel that you're missing something of value and importance to the novel as a whole?  Have you ever experienced a similar level of frustration?