Dunno. I can't read Russian for shit (pre-kindergarten level, I'd guess), but it seems like cheating to read it in English.

I can't imagine how much amazing and important literature you'd miss if you were snobby enough to think that you could only read things in their original language.

I'm so glad I get to read the Russians and Kafka and Calvino and Murakami and Camus and Marquez and Homer and Plato and, heck, the Bible.

I do know the feeling. I struggled through the start of My Brilliant Friend because I ought to read it in Italian, because I speak it pretty well. So then I didn't read it for years. Finally I just read it in English and enjoyed myself.

If you can read more than one language, try reading translations into two or three different ones. It'll give you a different view of a book you enjoy: the translations will all have a different feel, in my experience.

A translation is by necessity a work of both the author and the translator. There have been some amazing pairings such as Kafka translated by Edwin and Willa Muir. I don't think a translation necessarily diminishes the original work or the reader.

I know the feeling. Reading Don Quixote in English would be cheating.

Then again, so would reading Shakespeare in Spanish - even though I'm more comfortable reading in eng, I'm better in Spanish than i am 500 year old English