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Quotes About Mistranslation

I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said 'Deformed Man's Toilet,' that kind of thing.
~ David Henry Hwang
Scabbard?" I guessed. "Penis warmer," she told me.
~ Deanna Raybourn
He mispronounces the word hombres in the style of the US president who, attempting to call migrants bad men, inadvertently referred to them as bad hunger instead. It's a joke now, full of irony. Bad hunger. El comandante toes the line.
~ Jeanine Cummins
And I read a book that figured the part about the virgins is a mistranslation. The word is ambiguous. It comes in a passage full of food imagery. Milk and honey. It probably means raisins. Plump, and possibly candied or sugared." "They kill themselves for raisins?" "I'd love to see their faces.
~ Lee Child
The belief that Jews have horns apparently derives from a mistranslation from Hebrew of a verse in Exodus, compounded by a Michelangelo sculpture that portrays Moses with horns.) As I grew older, I became aware that many of my peers, evangelical Christians, believed as a matter of doctrine—if
~ Ben S. Bernanke
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
~ Jorge Luís Borges
We can easily see that the new conception of the Tomb in Arcady initiated by Poussin's Louvre picture, and sanctioned by the mistranslation of its inscription, could lead to reflections of almost opposite nature, depressing and melancholy on the one hand, comforting and assuaging on the other; and more often than not, to a truly "Romantic" fusion of both.
~ Erwin Panofsky
I like to say, 'Chop suey's the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another,' because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means 'tsap sui,' which, if you translate back, means 'odds and ends.'
~ Jennifer Lee
and spaghetti was busgetti
~ Carolyn Brown
I parle Francais like a Spanish cow.
~ Israel Horovitz
There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing.
~ Elaine Pagels
The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.-The Word of God exists in something else.
~ Thomas Paine
Mary, too, has an angel come and promise her a miraculous conception (cf. also 3:23). Gabriel addresses her as "highly favored" (Gk. kecharit?men?, lit. "having been given grace" or "having been treated graciously" in v. 28). The later Latin mistranslation of this verb by the expression "full of grace" (gratia plena) led to the traditional Roman Catholic conception of Mary as somehow uniquely meritorious or deserving of this honor.
~ Craig L. Blomberg
Inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content.
~ WALTER BENJAMIN
Cause what do groanhuffs know? All's they've done is heard our tales and passed em along in a game of Chinese Whispers, getting em all mixed up, like.
~ Hal Duncan
Several prominent thinkers have proposed reclassifying Druhástrana as a purely notional/mythical land since a) nobody seems to actually come from there or know how to get there and b) literal interpretations of the assertion that Druhástrana exists may be a profound mistranslation of Czech humor.
~ Helen Oyeyemi
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
~ Jorge Luís Borges
In his play House master, one character complains of another that "he can translate English into a Greek not spoken in Greece, and Greek into an English not spoken anywhere").
~ Unknown
Q'eeng had just attempted in the third dialect the traditional rightward schism greeting of "I offer you the bread of life," but his phrasing and accent had transmuted the statement into "Let us violate cakes together.
~ John Scalzi
Kitab-? Mukaddes'in Türkçesi çok kötü. ?ngilizcesi'nden kar??la?t?rarak okuyorum. Biri oturmu? çok kötü bir dille çevirmi?; bir kelimesi bile de?i?tirilemez ya: ondan sonra bir daha düzeltilmemi?. Çeviren, sanki ?sa'n?n Türkiye mümessili.
~ Unknown