Quotes About Translation Books

#1. Why don't these translation books just include general phrases that could be applied in a variety of situations like, "Say nothing unless it's in English"?

Joe Cawley

#2. Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.

Kate Williams

#3. There are only about 30,000 really important books in the world. I suppose about 5,000 of them were written in the English language, and 5,000 more have been translated. - Roger Mifflin

Christopher Morley

#4. [T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.

Paul Auster

#5. 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

#6. My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.

Margaret Atwood

#7. When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.

Etgar Keret

#8. I'm really tired of people saying what is lost in translation. Look at what you gain. You gain three universes worth of books. It's worth it to lose something in translation, if you can get a hundred more texts that are going to change your life.

Arshia Sattar

#9. Beyond the offer tables and online bestseller charts are many other narratives: books that take readers away from what they know, challenge the assumptions that underpin life elsewhere and present a strikingly different world ["How Books Get Lost In translation," Financial Times, January 15, 2015].

Ann Morgan

#10. In the NFL they talk about 'contracts,' but it's not really a contract, it's a one year agreement. If you have a 10 year contract, it means nothing. If you get cut in the NFL, you get nothing. People don't talk about that.

Eric Dickerson

#11. I have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well ... English has fallen short.

Marina Warner

#12. No one is more avidly curious about other people's doings than those persons whom they do not concern.

Victor Hugo

#13. I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk.

You Jin

#14. I'd thought there'd be no winter in the desert, but winter arrived anyway - silently, suddenly.

You Jin

#15. I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow!

Rex Stout

#16. The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a "soundless music". It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.

You Jin

#17. I find Japanese books quite baffling when I read them in translation. It's only with Haruki Murakami that I find Japanse fiction that I can understand and relate to. He's a very international writer.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#18. 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

#19. Mongkol, poor Mongkol, shedding tears.

Thinking of his smiling, comical face, and his dreams of sending his son to university, I could only lower my head in silence.

And the night continued, cold and dark, the wind frozen beyond the mountains.

You Jin

#20. I have six or seven 'what to name the baby' books, the Oxford dictionary of names, and a fabulous tome that's 26 languages in simultaneous translation - French, German, all the European majors, plus Esperanto, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.

Melanie Rawn

#21. There is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have of homosexuals. None. It's like the Jewish fear of the Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it's more like the Nazi fear of the Jews.

Jesse Andrews

#22. I wake up in that state of grief when you can tell you've been mourning even in your sleep.

Carolyn Parkhurst

#23. Turn off the light!

Who?

Not me,

but you!

Kim Da-Jeong

#24. 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

#25. Chinese readers are buying books in translation, particularly non-fiction about China, in large numbers.

Evan Osnos

#26. They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.

Marcel Proust

#27. Nobody over fifty has got any sense.

Agatha Christie

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.

Clive James

#31. 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