Quotes About Interpretation

If there is an interpreter sitting between two friends, he may be able to translate the words but not the feelings with which I say something.

In a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.

History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.

It can bum you out when your intentions aren't, like, translated properly.

A lot of times, people complain about how books and stories change when they're translated to the screen. But I think sometimes people forget that a lot of changes have to be made because we're not in a book when we're watching a movie.

I think that 'Mary Poppins' needs a subtle reader, in many respects, to grasp all its implications, and I understand that these cannot be translated in terms of the film.

Dreamland is a book, but it's my song in book form. It's translated itself into a different medium.

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.

I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.

Anyone that was raised with a Germanic language will agree that our tone is strong, especially once translated into English.

What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is.

The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.

Translation is the art of failure.

I wasn't happy with Tagore's own translations in English. Maybe he was, but I wasn't, so I took it upon myself to do it.

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.

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.

I started a company in 2005 for language services called Blue Elephant. We handle translation and interpretation services in over 120 languages.

Translation is at best an echo.

Translation is an act of recreation.

Sometimes I look up a recipe for chicken and tomatoes and end up cooking pork. The inspiration gets lost in translation.

Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.

No translation can possibly be perfect. Every production and every performance is a different path up the mountain, and nobody ever makes it all the way to the summit.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.