Sadly, I don't speak spanish. Can anyone give some insight on the most....natural sounding translation of the novel in English? I don't care for sounding too much like Cervantes because honestly, I'm no literary genius. I won't appreciate it as much as most folk. But I do want to read the story and still appreciate the symbolism and all that fun stuff. If I get anything too dry, I already know I'll lose interest and put it aside.
Don Quixote is one of those works that depends heavily on the reader being aware of the romances being satirized. The amount of in-jokes is staggering upon reflection, so if you aren't very aware of the courtly romance genre of the 14th-16th centuries, then much of the "magic" is lost whether you read it in a great translation or not (I read it in an annotated Spanish edition that footnoted the specific references).
So while I can't say one way or the other if the recent (I want to say 2009-2011 range) translation is good or not, I can say that going in nearly "blind" to the sources of Cervantes's satire will rob the story of most of its delightful wit and biting commentary.
When speaking of works difficult to approach/really enjoy without the proper frame of reference and a lot of preparatory reading to obtain it Rabelais and Cervantes are often mentioned in the same breath.
In Rabelais' case the language is another barrier (it's truculent only if you understand what's being said, which most modern speakers don't without help) and like Cervantes it requires a lot of footnotes to understand how brilliant and refined the work is. Whether those keep the reader's interest up or rather slow the reading down too much to be enjoyable depends on the reader.
Don Quixote has seen brilliant adaptations far more accessible (and for most people, more enjoyable) than the original to a modern audience. When I was a kid we had a Don Quixote TV show (the sort of slightly literary and highly absurd/witty kid program they probably wouldn't dare do anymore. Rather faithful to the spirit of Cervantes, though).
