Novel Translation Quotes

#1. the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish.

Aubrey F.G. Bell

#2. Though her grasp of English was modest and his Italian non-existent, their rapport was at once intuitive and intimate, founded more on physical attraction and a shared love of the outdoors than meaningful conversation.

Robert Radcliffe

#3. I think, therefore I am. My fingers that caress these rose and frangipani petals are a result of my thoughts. I feel content, tender. I feel entranced, ecstatic and besotted by the fragrance of the flowers and this is because of my thoughts.

Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

#4. Recently SCHISMATRIX became my first novel to come out in Finland. Perhaps there's a quality in a good translation that can't be captured with the original.

Bruce Sterling

#5. 'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded.

Edmund White

#6. What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is.

Jonathan Miller

#7. all you have to do is very simple. Stop rushing, slow down and enjoy life.

Karthik Mudaliar

#8. I really like John McCain. He's an awesome dude and was a lot of fun when he hosted "SNL." I'd love to see a McCain-Giuliani "rage" ticket.

Tina Fey

#9. Pak Karman hugged his wife's gravestone tightly. "You left without saying farewell!" The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.

Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

#10. I began going to juvenile prisons. And some of these kids face some very, very tough lives. How do they handle these lives? Do they even know that if their life is bad, that they're still OK? Do they know that? Do they know that someone is thinking the same way that they're thinking?

Walter Dean Myers

#11. My melancholy wants to rest in the hiding places and abysses of perfection: that is why I need music.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#12. Often touching ... Monumental Propaganda is a novel that slashes and rips ... In his translation, Andrew Bromfield deftly shifts his tone and tools as required, remaining true to Voinovich's Vonnegut-like playfulness and appreciation of the absurb.

Ken Kalfus

#13. I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean.

Tom Stoppard

#14. Sloth is the natural result of unrewarded hard work among the poor, reason enough for them to be prickly.

Lao She

#15. I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

Michael Cunningham

#16. Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel.

Rabih Alameddine