Read the English or Chinese version of this book? Both

Updated 2024/9/14:

Prioritize reading the Chinese version. Besides being my native language, another reason reading Chinese is faster is that Chinese characters take up less space — the English edition of DDIA is 1,200 pages, the Chinese edition is 600 pages. If you can't understand the Chinese, switch to the English; after reading the English, switch back to Chinese. Even with a poor Chinese translation of DDIA, this method lets me read faster while still understanding.

If the translation is poor, you can completely use AI to translate. I read the DeepL-translated version of "Pricing for Profit" and thought it was very good — fewer than five issues, and none affected understanding. There's a GitHub project that calls the DeepL API to translate the EPUB English version into an EPUB Chinese version.

deeplx: simulates the DeepL client to achieve free DeepL calls. Just deploy deeplx on your own server. I tried it and found it often triggers errors, probably due to too-frequent calls. I bought someone else's deployment on Taobao and it stopped triggering errors, but the translation quality seemed a bit reduced — maybe because it translates in segments.

My vocabulary size is around 5,600. You can use this to test your vocabulary:https://preply.com/en/learn/english/test-your-vocabIf your vocabulary is similar to mine, the difficulty of reading the books below should be about the same for you as it is for me.

Computer Networking: a Top Down Approach: vocabulary is simple, no long or difficult sentences.

Code Complete 2: vocabulary is simple, no long or difficult sentences.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: there are some vocabulary and long/difficult sentences I don't understand. The Chinese translation isn't very good and some parts are hard to follow. I recommend reading the Chinese and English versions side by side, because the English edition has over 1,200 pages of actual content — pure English reading takes time. When you don't understand the Chinese, read the English; after finishing the corresponding section, come back to the Chinese.

Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface: I don't understand a small portion of the English.

Supplement

I recommend using Calibre for reading; it has a dark mode and the dictionary is also very useful.

PC best reader Calibre usage pitfalls

You can ask GPT about long/difficult sentences. Microsoft Edge comes with free GPT-4,https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=undexpand(Requires a VPN/ways to bypass regional restrictions)