I played the TW2, but not TW1, though I watched it on youtube. Play TW2 because it is a great game, and the gameplay is more similar to TW3. As you can see in the thread, there are a lot of witcher lore videos to watch if you want to get the background - however - from what I've seen of this game:
If you want to know what is going on in the background, what the back story is, skip the games and read the books. More than the other games this one is picking up where the books left off, specifically the 5 book series (though there are a couple of stories from the short story collection to read). In fact the political situation at the end of TW2 is oftly similar to the one at the end of the books, just with a different river border.
And yes, the fan translations have some problems, but they aren't too bad either.
If you want to know what is going on in the background, what the back story is, skip the games and read the books. More than the other games this one is picking up where the books left off, specifically the 5 book series (though there are a couple of stories from the short story collection to read). In fact the political situation at the end of TW2 is oftly similar to the one at the end of the books, just with a different river border.
And yes, the fan translations have some problems, but they aren't too bad either.