I hate them.

It's like watching a pan and scan movie instead of widescreen. Actually it's worse. It's like listening to Pat Benatar's version of "Wuthering Heights" without ever having heard the Kate Bush original.

You get kind of ripped off reading prose translations, but poetry is worse because the patterns are more forced.

It's also disturbing how two translations of the same poem in the same language can be so different.
I hate having no idea if what I'm reading is anything close to what the author originally wrote.

I feel bad for bitching about this, since there are worse languages to be stuck with than English.

So instead I'll probably just learn French, German, Russian and maybe Greek. That should cover everything I'm interested in. Will maybe attempt Spanish and Italian too.

Absolutely no interest in anything Asian or African. Am not going to learn Latin, although it would be nice to know.