Quotes About Language

I'm trying to find the balance and do, like, 'Spanglish' music or some songs in Spanish and others in English or do a translation.

I read pretty well in French and Spanish. I don't want to read a book written in French or Spanish in translation.

I have some English words on the first album, but any time I try to do it, you miss something. You think it's just a simple translation from French to English, but it's so different as far as the understanding.

Yes, translation is by definition an inadequate substitute for being able to read a masterpiece in the original.

During the 20th century, Chechnya was written about by local poets and novelists, as well as writers from Russia and Central Asia, but very little is available in English translation.

Walter Benjamin used to think that languages expand their register thanks to translation, because translation forces ways of using words and structures that were alien to the original speaker of the target language.

I had to struggle with the language. I can understand Hindi now, but I still can't communicate. And things get lost in translation; I feel rejected all the time.

Most of us do not, in fact, read another language, and so when we read a translation, we have no way of knowing what has been changed or added.

My mother introduced to me as a child the world of language: the way in which translation can be a system by which you can understand others.

The English book world is relatively closed to translation, so only a small amount of foreign language work can come in.

I think translations should convey the feelings expressed in the original work. This is what I have believed in and practised.

In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.

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

I always read the translator's draft all the way through - a very laborious business.

Now, every organization has to have a translator for the Hispanics on the teams, and that helps a lot.

And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.

My mom is a translator for the school district in Delaware. She'd hear these different stories from working with families there. Those stories stuck with me.

When I act as a translator, I am really doing a performance for my fellow Anglophone readers in the West.

I remember what it was like when my parents couldn't help me with my homework because they couldn't speak the language, or being a translator for my parents. I did that a lot.

I never used a translator, never thought that the journalists might not understand.

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.

You know it was really hard to do a set, or even to do interviews in English, because in Europe, we always had a translator with us.

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.

The only problem was that I couldn't communicate with Dario. He speaks Italian and I don't. We had a translator the whole time. I just felt that something was lost with the go between. He was a delightful man, but I wish we could have spoken the same language.