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I have a book on Heidi written in Spanish. My grandmother gave this to my when was little because it belonged to my mother when she was a girl, and she wanted it to help me learn Spanish.

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This one is lying on my desk right now. I bought the copy of Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu during one of my trips to China. My Chinese copy is in simplified characters. I have previously read it in English. Recently we have started reading it in its original language with my friend. It is hilarious.

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I bought this book at the Japan Festival in London last year as I'm learning Japanese and it has helped me with my Japanese reading practice. Ikkyuu san is a children's book about a young zen Buddhist monk from Kyoto who solves problems using his intelligence. While this is a storybook, Ikkyuu san is based on a real monk who lived in the Oei era. The book is quite simple but still very interesting! I recommend it for people who are learning Japanese.

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Most books in my house are foreign language, in the sense of not being written in Portuguese. To show here, I've picked Snow Country Tales, an English-language translation of an avant-la-lettre "ethnography" written in 1835 by Bokushi Suzuki, a physician who lived and worked in the then-remote Snow Country of Echigo province.

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I have a copy of the Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary by Vaman Shivaram Apte, as published by the Rinsen Book Co. in Kyoto.  My husband has several books in Bengali, as that is his first language.

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I have a copy of the Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary by Vaman Shivaram Apte, as published by the Rinsen Book Co. in Kyoto.  My husband has several books in Bengali, as that is his first language.

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I have lots of books written in foreign languages. I have books in German, Japanese, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, and more. I bought most of these books because I am working on learning those languages. Some came to my house because they are collections of stories.

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My native languages are English and German. I would love to already be proficient enough to read contemporary literature in the original version in Chinese (Mo Yan) and Japanese (Murakami-san, Yoshimoto-san). Since this is not the case, I would like tell you about my favourite multilingual book instead.
The Irish writer Samuel Beckett translated his own 1953 play from French (En attendant Godot) into English. It is impressive to pinpoint the little differences in both version, plus in the German translation. This opus displays several 20th century European schools of thought and makes excellent cross-over study material for literature, linguistics, philosophy, religion, history and political science at the same time.

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The book is printed using simplified Chinese characters although Zheng Hen Shui would of course have written in the complex characters universally used at the time. The story has a great resonance with the present day because Zhang was obviously deeply concerned with the exploitation of women by powerful and unscrupulous men, which is a major theme of the book.

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I bought this book in a modern art gallery in Edinburgh.
It is written mostly in Japanese and every few pages there is a description in English.
One of the reasons why I bought this book was because it shows prints of famous places in Japan then years later a photograph of the place was taken, I found the changes that take place over time intresting to see.

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The Book of Books - Biblical Canon, Dissemination and Its People

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The Book of Books - Biblical Canon, Dissemination and Its People

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This is a catalogue of a rare exhibition that brought together the real objects of written biblical scripture, from 1st century BCE until the present, written in various technologies, including ink on papyrus, gevil, and vellum,  parchment, and of course the printing technologies. They span the languages of Ancient, Medieval and Modern Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, to name a few. I studies image engineering in Chiba University, and then studied and volunteered in book conservation in Israel and the US. I am passionate about Japanese calligraphy (practice writing the 千字文, 俳句 and 仮名) and very excited about this course.

Sharon.

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François Jullien invites one, who has been living between Asia (Japan) and Europe (France, Germany), to see things in-between.
Akiko (木岡さい)

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I just received some fun Japanese quilting, patchwork, and Ikebana books from my grandmother. She used to work as a florist, and did a lot of quilting. I speak Japanese, but my grandma doesn’t, so she must’ve just followed the pictures.

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This is a book I bought at a used bookstore in Japan. It doesn't have any text. just illustrations of models of cursive Chinese calligraphy. Its original owner left a page from his/her own practice inside the book. It's bound in the East Asian style.

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The Fables of Æsop. Illustrated in Colour by Edward J. Detmold.

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The Fables of Æsop. Illustrated in Colour by Edward J. Detmold.

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1. I feel this book is not strictly in a foreign language because most Dutch people of my generation speak English on a level to be considered bilingual. However, I am including it here because it is much more interesting than any of the dictionaries or lesson-books I have at home. My cousin in the States was clearing out his house at asked me if I wanted this book, because I have a great love for illustrated books. A well travelled book!

2. As many of you might know the fables in this book are often distinguished by its use of animals as primary protagonists. They are mostly read to young children to teach them about morals. Although this is an English edition, I feel like English is very close to Dutch: we are neighbours after all and both are Germanic languages. Dutch is a hotchpot of loanwords like Latin, Greek, English, German, and French. If you listen carefully to a fellow European you can know what they are saying. We are very interwoven.

Carlijn Bakker.

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I've German, Polish, Dutch & one in Russian.

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I've German, Polish, Dutch & one in Russian.

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They are packed away and too hard to photograph.

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I'm interested in how other people see my country. I have many English books about the Netherlands, but only two German books, because that language is more difficult for me.
Arjan Dedden

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These books were given me by an Arabic teacher when I learned Arabic language

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This is a book bought for my grandson by a friend Alex who was travelling in Beijing. My son has been teaching my grandson some basic Mandarin because he has some friends who are from China. The story is difficult to read but the pictures help!

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This is a German book about bookbinding. I have it because I am a bookbinder and this is an important bookbinding text which has never been translated into English. I speak English and although I really can not speak or read German, the German language is incredibly familiar. It uses the same alphabet, so that is helpful. English is a germanic language, of course, and looking through this book, I can recognize some words and word-structures. (It also has a lot of very good diagrams so I am still able to use it as a reference book sometimes). This German book is much more familiar than the old Chinese book that I posted about previously - which to me, has no recognizable text in it.

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I believe this is Chinese, although since I can not read it, maybe I am wrong! I am told it is probably a student copy of an acupuncture manual. I own a small collection of old Chinese and Japanese books that are hand-bound. I acquired them because I am a bookbinder so I like to examine authentic handmade books from around the world. Also, I study and teach about bookbinding histories around the world. I am an English-speaking person, so the characters and language in this book really have no connection to my own language and writing, as far as I know.

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This is a book published in the 1970's with photos and information on Japanese castles.

I have a fascination with Japanese castles and this is part of a multi-year study of Japanese castles, their history and learning about the castles that remain in Japan.

David Bennett

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A new English translation  I bought in the nineties which is presented side by side with the original Italian.
K. Polhuis

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Although not strictly a "foreign" language, it is not in my native tongue.  This is a bible in Scottish Gaelic which I discovered at my parents.  None of us spoke the language.
Colin C Brien

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A Kana character dictionary. I have in the last month started learning how to write Kana with a brush. This is a gift that I received from my calligraphy teacher yesterday (hence the nearest foreign language book to hand). Its main purpose is to allow people to read cursive Kana (Kuzushiji) in old documents and book by looking them up in the book.  My teacher was thinking of my desire to read such books and also thinking to give me a printed copy of some very good calligraphy. Most of the examples come from pre-Kamakura classics written by the great writers of the era (e.g. extracts from Fujiwara no Teika's handwritten diary). These character dictionaries are ubiquitous for students and researchers of pre-modern Japan, this 2017 edition is the 219th reprinting from a 1972 original.

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I'm currently learning Japanese. And one day, as I was asking a Japanese colleague about how a pair of chopsticks and other quantities of things would be phrased, she presented me with this book on Japanese quantifiers that lists common and not so common ways to count things. The book reads from right to left. The quantifiers are all typed in a brushstroke font with furigana, and have simple line drawings alongside them to supplement understanding. Explanations are unobtrusively presented in a small 'digitalised' font. Did you know that the quantifier for a [hair] comb is the same as for paper?!

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Along with mathematical texts, see elsewhere here, I have a much treasured gift from a student of this scroll - the complete Heart Sutra.
Kevin Davis

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I got this book in English during a my first worldtrip to India in 1975 in a VW van. An Indian a guy we met overthere told me many stories from this book by heart. When returning to Holland he gave it to me as a present, which I keep as a treasure !
One other book is in French: "citations du president Mao Tsetoung". I bought in the seventies but never read sofar.

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It's a book of Latin grammar that I use to teach Latin to my student. I'm from Italy, so of course Latin is at the base of my native Language, probably just like Chinese is to Japanese.

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I have the book 'Little Miss Splendid' in French (Madame Beauté). Unfortunately I can't provide a photo!

This is a French translation of a children's book from the fairly famous "Mr Men" line of books. They're aimed at quite young children with fairly simple language.

The book was a rather misguided purchase by my parents many years ago, when we were on holiday in France! I used to love the Mr Men books, and they evidently thought this would be a wonderful way to introduce me to French. As I didn't know a single word of French at the time, I'm not sure how they expected me to get started...!

As a native English speaker, the French language has had a very strong influence on my own language, and I believe it is the most commonly-taught foreign language in the UK.

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The book it is written enterely in English by Matthew Rettenmund. It is a large book. About more than 600 pages, that's what is more an enciclopedia from A to Z.

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The only other language book I could find in my house was this Portuguese English Dictionary from when I travelled to Lisbon. I have other foreign language phrase books too.
Sue Coles

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A well worn copy of the nine chapters of the mathematical arts. Fascinated by the way mathematical ideas and concepts are developed in different cultures: among many gems included there are techniques that were 'discovered' centuries later and identified as 'European inventions' - cf Gaussian elimination.
Obviously this is a modern copy, although I do have a photographic copy of an early text written on bamboo strips. Indeed it was this technique of cataloging mathematics that means in China we have access to the oldest extant materials.
Kevin Davis

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The book "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami is about a boy who walks away from home at age 15, renames himself Kafka and finds shelter in a library. The other main character is Nakata, who lost his memory and ability to read after an accident at the end of WW2 but is able to communicate with cats. It is interesting how all the even numbered chapters are about Nakata, but their stories eventually intertwine.

Last summer I bought this book on a trip in France where I found the Japanese original in a little bookstore. I had already read the English translation and I fell in love with the story, so of course I had to have the book in Japanese as well. Murakami's books are very popular in the Netherlands and because of my major in Japanese language & culture, I was interested in reading his books. "Kafka on the Shore" is by far my most favorite Murakami-book.

In the Netherlands, the main literary influences throughout history are mainly French, German, and British. Thus, the relationship between this book and my own language (Dutch) and culture might mainly be the popularity of the writer in my country. His books are also translated in Dutch, but I personally prefer the English translation and of course the original in Japanese.