I went to SM Aura Premier with my parents and sisters last Saturday. The place was fine, given that some of the stores and restaurants were still not open. Anyway, being such book lovers, we went to National Book Store just to take a look inside (it was pretty small, by the way). Since my youngest sister is on a Trese streak (totally recommending this, especially to graphic novel readers), I went with her to the Philippine Fiction section in the bookstore to buy the latest one. When I saw Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and The Hunger Games trilogy translated into Filipino, I cringed.
But that's the million-dollar question: Why did I cringe? Books were translated all the time so the citizens of that nation could understand the story if they couldn't fully understand English. So why should the Filipino translations be any different? Harry Potter has been translated into several languages—the same goes for the other bestsellers. If anything, these were translated because they wanted the others—the people who could not understand English as well as some of us do—to enjoy the story as much as we do. This could be the same for the people who decided to translate these bestsellers.
I admit, I prefer the original English ones over the Filipino translations. It might be because I'm far too used to reading my books in English that seeing the Filipino ones got me cringing. Even the Philippine literature that I do read are in English (save for the ones like the works of Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio). However, I do applaud the publishing company that decided to do this. In doing so, the masses who are more inclined to Filipino could enjoy the same stories that most of us enjoy.
Now to get back to Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado.
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