Of course it would be great to read books in their native language, but is it better to get a reasonable translation of a book, or no translation at all? That is the question.
If you take some authors with multiple translations over many decades, e.g. Proust or Hugo, you can see that the early translations are actually very rough, and only recently are we seeing very high quality.
The main problem is that language translation is forever imperfect. If you look at Proust's French, there is no direct translation into English for the way it is written because no English person writes in that manner, so the translator has to make a lot of hard decisions to make the book enjoyable.
My French isn't strong enough to read native Proust (god, I wish it was), but then you have things like Hugo which is 1800s French and I'm sure even modern French kids have some trouble reading it.
If you do read a translated book, PLEASE find the best translation before you purchase. I'll give you an example...
But it is a miserable 100 year old translation spruced up a bit. You will probably hate the book and hate your life if you try to read it. It boasts that it is unabridged because that seems like a thing you would want, but...
It is somewhat "abridged" because the translator took the bold step of tearing out 50 pages of the book - that are basically just the author going on a rant and has nothing to do with the story - and translated them and stuffed them in the appendix. This was a smart move, and went above their job title to produce a much more readable work.
tl;dr: read more great foreign books; always check you are getting the best translation before you start
If you take some authors with multiple translations over many decades, e.g. Proust or Hugo, you can see that the early translations are actually very rough, and only recently are we seeing very high quality.
The main problem is that language translation is forever imperfect. If you look at Proust's French, there is no direct translation into English for the way it is written because no English person writes in that manner, so the translator has to make a lot of hard decisions to make the book enjoyable.
My French isn't strong enough to read native Proust (god, I wish it was), but then you have things like Hugo which is 1800s French and I'm sure even modern French kids have some trouble reading it.
If you do read a translated book, PLEASE find the best translation before you purchase. I'll give you an example...
This Les Mis book has the same illustration on the front (public domain) as the musical poster, so it looks official: https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Signet-Classics-Victor-Hug...
But it is a miserable 100 year old translation spruced up a bit. You will probably hate the book and hate your life if you try to read it. It boasts that it is unabridged because that seems like a thing you would want, but...
This new translation by Penguin is like night and day: https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp...
It is somewhat "abridged" because the translator took the bold step of tearing out 50 pages of the book - that are basically just the author going on a rant and has nothing to do with the story - and translated them and stuffed them in the appendix. This was a smart move, and went above their job title to produce a much more readable work.
tl;dr: read more great foreign books; always check you are getting the best translation before you start