I don't know about Ben, but I don't enjoy Spanish novels in English nearly as much as I do in French. Zafon is planned for purchase soon, and I go with the pricey French edition over the far cheaper English one.

I don't have an extensive list to compare, but take Captain Alatriste for example. I read book 1 in French and book 2 in English. The English translation isn't bad at all, but the French one conveys the "Europeanity" and latinity of Reverte better (it's the reverse of the fact French translators just don't seem to be able to translate American novels properly. They just don't get America. They should really let us translate those books, especially those from north-east writers like King, Irving and co..).

It's even more marked in Reverte's two thrillers I read in both languages. If I'm not to read about Barcelona in Spanish, French is definitely the second best option. I also prefer Borges in French than in English, though it's different books I've read in each language. Good news on that front by the way, the crazy law-suit happy widow has finally settled with his friend the translator and the French publisher, and the critical edition of his complete works is finally back in print (after 13 years, IRRC). It was a complete shame the widow torpedoed that edition after a few months (reputedly she found a typo about a stupid date like her birthday or the day she met Borges, and used that excuse to ask the publisher to destroy all the books. The truth is apparently that she hates the translator, a friend of her husband, and ressented the fame he was getting for his work with Borges on that edition), as it was the first (and now the only) critical edition to which Borges himself contributed. Borges wished for the critical material to be sold for editions in other languages (thanks to his widow's pettyness, that never happened).

It's the same for Italian. I didn't like the English translation of Foucault's Pendulum so much, the French one is much better. It conveyed the "hermetism" through the language better, and from interviews I suspect it's like that in the original. There was a lot of rare words that exist in both Italian and French but could only be translated by not so rare words in English, and in the increased accessibility, you sort of lost something. I've been tempted to pick the third book of Monaldi & Sorti's series in English (historical "mysteries" that come close to Eco's erudition, for real for once!), since there appears to be some major problem or another with the French edition that never came out, but I fear too much the baroque flavour that's very well conveyed in French. I love 17-18th century English well enough, but Dafoe's English (and even less that period's slang) just wouldn't do as an alternative to baroque Italian.

Oh, and Ben's right about Anne Robillard. She writes for teenagers, mind you, but her stuff is very derivative (it's also pretty much for girls, IMO). She is also quite a bit nuts, the sort of Fantasy writer who believes in her stuff (she has the weirdest set of superstitious New Age-ish beliefs)... She sells like crazy, though, and is by a long shot the best-selling Québécois writer in Europe.

And it's better kids read that than Stephanie Meier and that ilk.

I guess I ought to have mentionned my cousin's daughter is about to publish the first book in her Fantasy series, thanks a lot to Robillard's help (hopefully she won't turn into the next local Paolini. She's 20 now, but wrote the first three books in the last 6 years) I haven't read it, but from mom's comments (she made an editing pass and helped her correct the manuscripts before she sent them to publishers), it promises to be a bit...hmmm... conventional.