Ann Goldstein Quotes

#1. Primo Levi's - I mean, he's a very different kind of writer. He's a much more formal writer. He's a much more -almost detached. I mean, I wouldn't really say that he's detached ultimately. But he does write as a scientist, and so he describes things very - in great detail, very carefully.

Ann Goldstein

#2. To have the translator be a figure in the book's presentation seems like a big thing, especially for a book that's really popular.

Ann Goldstein

#3. It's one of the hardest things to translate anything that's not standard.

Ann Goldstein

#4. I always hesitate to say that something is lifelike.

Ann Goldstein

#5. I like to think of the individual words, then you put the word in the sentence, then you have to think about what that word means in the sentence, then you have to read the sentence in the paragraph - you're sort of building up like that; that's my philosophy.

Ann Goldstein

#6. One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not.

Ann Goldstein

#7. I don't have a philosophy. If I had a philosophy, it's that I'm kind of literal minded. For example, I would never translate poetry - it's too hard, there are too many levels. Not that prose doesn't have many levels, but it's more grounded.

Ann Goldstein

#8. I think that physical actions are always hard to describe, to translate.

Ann Goldstein

#9. I think that being an editor, someone who works with words, is very good training for being a translator because it trains you to be attentive to words in a very specific, very concrete, very literal way.

Ann Goldstein

#10. I think it's important to be accurate on the level of the word, but it's also important to be accurate at the level of the sentence, at the level of the paragraph. Sometimes you lose sight of that - I remind myself to go back and read.

Ann Goldstein

#11. I really had wanted to learn Italian for a long time. I think ever since - or even maybe even before I had read Dante. And I just sort of had this idea that I wanted to read Dante in Italian. And then in my office, we actually had a class - an Italian class.

Ann Goldstein

#12. The Neapolitan novels have a lot of references to things outside, to things of the world, to culture, politics, the city of Naples. People have mentioned that Naples is like a character in the novels.

Ann Goldstein

#13. I tend to be kind of literal about translation. I think it's important to present the writer as closely as possible.

Ann Goldstein

#14. As the writer, you can choose the word that seems best in terms of meaning, nuance, sound, etc. As the translator you are unlikely to find a word in your language that exactly matches, so that you are always making a decision about which meaning or nuance to choose, or emphasize, over the others.

Ann Goldstein

#15. The truth is, just to hear other people speaking Italian is really worth it. It keeps the sound in your ear.

Ann Goldstein

#16. That's a huge subject - a writer refusing to do publicity but writing about publicity.

Ann Goldstein