Quotes from David Bellos

Translation is meaning.

Once again, the expression uttered (in speech or writing) is not the sole or even the primary object of translation when the force of an utterance is what matters, as it always does.

the semantics of words is an intellectual mess.

The survivor language, English, is not necessarily the best suited to the job; it's just that nothing has yet happened to knock it out.

It can be done only by guessing what the context and genre of the utterance are.

Most of the time, the symptomatic meaning of an utterance is just too obvious to be noticed.

any utterance of more than trivial length has no one translation; all utterances have innumerably many acceptable translations.