Original Language Quotes

#1. I learned English at school, or at least that's how it started. Also, in Holland - as opposed to some other European countries - we don't dub anything, so as a kid growing up, always watching English and American movies in their original language really helped.

Michiel Huisman

#2. Look, we have existed for 4,000 years - 2,000 years in diaspora, in exile. Nobody in the Middle East speaks their original language but Israel. When we started 64 years ago, we were 650,000 people. So, you know, we are maybe swimming a little bit against the stream, but we continue to swim.

Shimon Peres

#3. You should take notes whenever you hear interesting or original language.

Randa Abdel-Fattah

#4. If you actually look at the etymology of the word 'hallucination', what it's come to mean in English is a delusion. But what it really means in the original language is to wander in the mind. That's the meaning of 'hallucination', to wander in the mind.

Terence McKenna

#5. In the original language, "he gave thanks" reads "eucharisteo." ... The root word for eucharisteo is charis, meaning "grace." Jesus took bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks.

Ann Voskamp

#6. I don't think that someone who does not speak the original language can ever expect to produce a real translation.

Christian Wiman

#7. The stories about the life and teachings of Jesus were mainly told in Greek, the original language of the gospels.

Jay Parini

#8. Words also are filters. They have to be translated. Even in the original language, there is interpretation and some ambiguity. If there's a cultural difference between the writer and the reader, that might come out in words. But with pictures, there's more efficiency.

Marjane Satrapi

#9. In the original language, 'Fear the Lord' doesn't mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him.

Timothy Keller

#10. The original language of Christianity is translation.

Lamin Sanneh

#11. This is a fault incident to all those who presume to translate books of verse into another language. For, however much care they take and however much ability they employ, they can never equal the quality of the original.

Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

#12. The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!

Manuel Puig

#13. Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) was the last major Greek philosopher of the classical era to make significant original contributions to the study of language, developing a socio-anthropological theory of the origin of language.

Richard E. McDorman

#14. I liked to watch anime in the original Japanese even though I couldn't speak a single word of the language.

S.M. Reine

#15. After the original rapture of conversion had settled in, (Bob) Dylan backed away from his obviously Christian lyrics and returned to his more metaphorical use of language.

Ron Jacobs

#16. For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.

Donna Tartt

#17. Parallelism may be the only poetic device that can be fully translated from one language to another.? Thus the Bible, translated into hundreds of languages, maintains its original poetic form and effects in every tongue, a linguistic curiosity that is clearly God's design.

Gene Edward Veith Jr.

#18. A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets.

Gregory Rabassa

#19. C gives the programmer what the programmer wants; few restrictions, few complaints... C++ maintains the original spirit of C, that the programmer not the language is in charge.

Herbert Schildt

#20. The poem is a form of texting ... it's the original text. It's a perfecting of a feeling in language - it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is.

Carol Ann Duffy

#21. The language of sin was universal, the original Esperanto.

Joe Hill

#22. A true music, that is to say, spiritual, a music which may be an act of faith; a music which may touch upon all subjects without ceasing to touch upon God; an original music, in short, whose language may open a few doors, take down some yet distant stars.

Olivier Messiaen

#23. I've come to think that there's an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country, pat them down with a paper napkin and then deep-fry them in another country, another language like hot oil scalding the first language away.

Helen Oyeyemi

#24. Language, at least, may give up the secrets of life and death, leading us through the maze to the original Word as monster or angel, to the mournful place where we may meet Job and hear his cry, 'How long will you vex my soul and break me in pieces with words?

Janet Frame

#25. Why? Because true translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal

John Berger

#26. Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. Ifwe are to continue talking about "data" in any other sense than as reflective distinctions, the original datum is always such a qualitative whole.

John Dewey

#27. True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

Walter Benjamin

#28. Sometimes during solitude I hear truth spoken with clarity and freshness; uncolored and untranslated it speaks from within myself in a language original but inarticulate, heard only with the soul, and I realize I brought it with me, was never taught it nor can I efficiently teach it to another.

Hugh B. Brown

#29. As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.

Edward Sapir

#30. Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.

Gene Wolfe

#31. As for most writers, language is vital for me: a writer's ability to render a fictional world - characters, landscape, emotions - into something original that alters or deepens my understanding of both literature and life.

Dinaw Mengestu

#32. Phonocentrism places higher value on spoken language as being more primary than and thus superior to written language, which it conceives as necessarily corrupting the original Subject - the center of meaning.

Minae Mizumura

#33. Our first experience of life is primarily felt in the *body.* ... We know ourselves in the security of those who hold us and gaze upon us. It's not heard or seen or thought it's felt. That's the original knowing.

Richard Rohr

#34. Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense.

Thomas Paine

#35. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language - it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

Brene Brown

#36. Interestingly, vinifera is native to the same ara of southwestern Russia as the original Indo-European peoples, whose prehistoric migrations carried the Indo-European language and the vinifera grape to all parts of the ancient world.

Jeff Cox

#37. This modern interpretation of Machiavelli's landmark work is perhaps more useful for the modern reader than the original text. His dense ideas have been boiled down to their essence and presented in language that can be easily grasped by the modern mind.

Brandon Musk

#38. What is it to know a variety of languages, but merely to have a variety of sounds express the same idea? Original thought is ore of the mind; language is but the stamp and coinage by which it is put into circulation.

Washington Irving

#39. How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

Henry David Thoreau

#40. Any Name of God in any language is worthy of respect but the original Name of God in the Semitic language is Allah. This (Semitic) is the language of the celestial entities. It is by this Name that the angels call upon God and it is attached to the Title of every Prophet.

Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi