Top 100 Quotes About Translation
#2. There is a new venue for theory, necessarily impure, where it emerges in and as the very event of cultural translation. This is not the displacement of theory by historicism, nor a simple historicization of theory that exposes the contingent limits of its more generalizable claims.
Judith Butler
#3. Translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the special purpose of demonstrating the learner's knowledge of the foreign language, either as a form of control or to exercise his intelligence in order to develop his competence.
Peter Newmark
#4. Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the world.
Tom Chatfield
#5. And on the subject of naming animals, can I just say how happy I was to discover that the word yeti, literally translated, apparently means "that thing over there."
("Quick, brave Himalayan Guide - what's that thing over there?"
"Yeti."
"I see.")
Neil Gaiman
#6. To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.
Nataly Kelly
#7. I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.
Jung Chang
#8. For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
Cyril Connolly
#9. Those who can't, and can't teach, translate.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)
Mort W. Lumsden
#10. Whenever he's tried to dig out such secrets from her behind her mother's back, she has retreated like a tortoise into her child's shell. Children are quick to sense a threat. (From "Crows" by Mrinal Pande)
Keerti Ramachandra
#12. I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.
Sylvia Plath
#13. I don't know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people's websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries.
Tim Berners-Lee
#14. On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.
Albert Einstein
#15. Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
Gwendolyn Brooks
#16. Government exists to create and preserve conditions in which people can translate their ideas into practical reality. In the best of times, much is lost in translation. But we try.
Gerald R. Ford
#17. At the end of the day, even the magic of machine translation is like Facebook, a way of taking free contributions from people and regurgitating them as bait for advertisers or others who hope to take advantage of being close to a top server.
Jaron Lanier
#18. Mathematics to me is like a language I don't speak though I admire its literature in translation.
David Quammen
#19. In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person wholly out of one class into another. Perfect translation from one language into another is impossible. Class is the British language.
William Golding
#20. I think reading a translation is an act of faith.
Donna Leon
#21. [...] it is safer to wander without a guide through an unmapped country than to trust completely a map traced by men who came only as tourists and often with biased judgement.
Marie-Louise Sjoestedt
#22. Air power speaks a strategic language so new that translation into the hackneyed idiom of the past is impossible.
Alexander P. De Seversky
#23. Skywalker is a direct translation of the word shaman out of the Tungusic, which is where Siberian shamanism comes from. So these heroes that are being instilled in the heart of the culture are shamanic heroes. They control a force which is bigger than everybody and holds the galaxy together.
Terence McKenna
#24. The language of translation ought never to attract attention to itself.
John Hookham Frere
#25. I feel French is very close to Urdu. Both languages are beautiful. Sadly, their beauty is lost in translation.
Amisha Patel
#26. He's got a box with a demon in it that draws pictures," said Rincewind shortly. "Do what the madman says and he will give you gold.
Terry Pratchett
#27. Say that again, Commonwealth whit? (translation: what?) I'm no used tae hearing that.
Charlie Flynn
#28. The goal of Bible translation is be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.
Leland Ryken
#29. I cannot say that I know Brahman fully.
Nor can I say that I know him not ...
Nor do I know that I know him not.
Swami Prabhavananda
#30. 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
#31. When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated
Sun Tzu
#32. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, / pulcher et fortissimus. (Translation: The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave.)
Friedrich Nietzsche
#33. The Haitians, who knew something about suffering and survival, had a beautiful phrase ... The Translation is not perfect, but the nut of it was: 'The season of pain is never over until the sky begins to cry.
Rick Bragg
#34. If I make a speech, I need a translator. But music does not need a translation. People understand me through the sound. That I think is very important. This is just one planet, like one family.
Mstislav Rostropovich
#35. So I drank every night after work, alone, up at my place and I had enough left for a day at the track on Saturday, and life was simple and without too much pain. Maybe without too much reason, but getting away from pain was reasonable enough.
Charles Bukowski
#36. Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter.
Suzy Kassem
#37. The King! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don't kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that's all.
Alexandre Dumas
#38. FALCKNER, DANIEL. Curieuse Nachricht from Pennsylvania. Translation by Julius F. Sachse. Lancaster, Pa.: 1905. Series of 103 questions and answers, on all aspects of Pennsylvania Conditions. Written at close of the seventeenth century. Several editions printed in Germany.
Anonymous
#39. Always check the peephole before answering the door. You never know who's on the other side.
Translation: serial killers knock before attacking.
Katie McGarry
#40. Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle.
Gilbert Murray
#41. Id Faciam
What I hate I love. Ask the crucified hand that holds
the nail that now is driven into itself, why.
Catullus
#42. He who reads the Bible in translation is like a man who kisses his bride through a veil.
Hayim Nahman Bialik
#43. Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures
Susan Sontag
#44. The men who act stand nearer to the mass of man than the men who write; and it is in their hands that new thought gets its translation into the crude language of deeds.
Woodrow Wilson
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.
Amara Lakhous
#48. I do a lot of recipe creation. Translation: cooking tempting dishes that must be eaten.
Ruth Glick
#49. It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
Alan W. Watts
#52. Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?
Nataly Kelly
#53. Sometimes I long to forget ... It is painful to be conscious of two worlds.
Eva Hoffman
#54. Daemon spoke in his language. The lyrical quality of his words made no sense to me.
"What did you say?" I asked.
"There's really no translation for it," he said, "but the closest human words would be, you are beautiful to me.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#55. I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.
William Cowper
#56. Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.
Paul Gauguin
#57. Where names of people or places would mean little to a contemporary reader, I figured "translation errors" could create interesting new meanings.
Hal Duncan
#58. Translation is not appropriation, as is sometimes claimed; it is a form of listening that then changes how you speak.
Eliot Weinberger
#59. Translation makes me look at how a poem is put together in a different way, without the personal investment of the poem I'm writing myself, but equally closely technically.
Marilyn Hacker
#60. Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets.
Richard M. Weaver
#61. 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
#62. THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY is ostensibly an autobiography but in truth it is much more than that. In this remarkably fine new translation, Anthea Bell perfectly captures Stefan Zweig's glorious evocation of a lost world, Vienna's golden age, in which he grew up and flourished.
Ronald Harwood
#63. There's a Cuban saying: Bicho malo nunca muere. Loose translation: The good die young but the wicked live forever. It seems to apply to Fidel. I hope it applies to me.
Gustavo Perez Firmat
#64. I believe she imbued my body thus, finding every touch enhanced by ambiguity of intention, as if it too required translation, and so each touch branched out, became a variety of touches.
Ben Lerner
#65. When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)
Joseph Campbell
#66. I love these words that just can't be translated from language to language. They seem dignified, grounded, battling against the imperialism of reality.
Olivier Magny
#67. I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation.
Beck
#68. When you play a character, you bring yourself into the character. You get a chance to shine and show your translation for the character and her state of mind.
Gal Gadot
#69. What I called jottings would not be a rendering of the text, not so to speak a translation with another symbolism. The text would not be stored up in the jottings. And why should it be stored up in our nervous system?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#70. I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.
Elliott Colla
#71. The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good.
Guillermo Del Toro
#72. All translation is a compromise - the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic.
Benjamin Jowett
#73. The world cannot be translated;
It can only be dreamed of and touched.
Dejan Stojanovic
#74. Many people just think they understand English, remember.
Emma Wagner
#76. They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.
Marcel Proust
#77. A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation.
David Nicholls
#78. (Claude and Marcel LeFever were speaking in French. This simultaneous English translation is being beamed to the reader via literary satellite.)
Tom Robbins
#79. Translation: I need to know the particulars of craziness so I can assure myself that I'm not crazy.
Susanna Kaysen
#80. Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.
Leonard Cohen
#81. Most of the contexts are life and death, by the way, and God is your only hope. Your ezer. If he is not there beside you ... you are dead. A better translation therefore of ezer would be "lifesaver." Kenegdo means alongside, or opposite to, a counterpart.
John Eldredge
#82. When you grow up in the church, the only translation in that insular world that people understand is preaching. You're supposed to be a minister. So I was going down that path, and then I saw the Tonys.
Billy Porter
#83. Chinese readers are buying books in translation, particularly non-fiction about China, in large numbers.
Evan Osnos
#84. Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.
Italo Calvino
#85. When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting.
C.S. Lewis
#86. When I spoke to her in Spanish I was not translating, I was not thinking my thoughts in English first, but I was nevertheless outside the language I was speaking, building simple sentences with the blocks I'd memorized, not communicating through a fluid medium.
Ben Lerner
#88. Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary)- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper will result in a story.
Roberta Gellis
#89. Let twelve angels come into being to rule over chaos and the underworld. And look, from the cloud there appeared an angel whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means in translation 'rebel'; others call him Yaldabaoth.
Rodolphe Kasser
#90. As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.
William H Gass
#91. Certainly, one of the greatest achievements of the human intellectual spirit was the Arabic Translation Movement. Over the course of about 100 years, virtually the entire Greek Scientific and philosophical corpus was either translated or summarized into Arabic (McGinnis, 10).
Jon McGinnis
#92. A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
Jonathan Swift
#93. Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language.
Moses Finley
#94. Rnesh karr slithis, I hissed back, which was Draconic for eat your own tail, the dragon version of go screw yourself. No extra translation needed.
Julie Kagawa
#95. I need to explain all this to Adam in private. I can't get McGillicuddy to explain it to him. Something will be lost in translation."
"Well, excuse me that I can't look at him all googly-eyed," my brother said.
"And he's liable to punch you," I said.
Jennifer Echols
#96. A cruel queen does not mean an unsuccessful one. Under her guidance, Kenettra changed from a glittering gem into a clouded stone, and her empire became one to rule all others, a darkness that stretched from sun, to sea, to sky.
- The Empire of the Wolf, translation by Tarsa Mehani
Marie Lu
#98. [There is less precision in the Chinese than I have thought it well to introduce into my translation, and the commentaries on the passage are by no means explicit. But, having regard to the context, we can hardly doubt that Sun Tzu is holding up I Chih and Lu Ya as illustrious
Sun Tzu
#99. Nefarious purposes translation: For disgusting demon sex and the birth of the Devil incarnate. Nice.
Elle Casey
#100. '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
