Quotes About Translation

My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

Failing to comprehend the original meaning of these documents guarantees that the original message will be lost in translation and maybe one day even deemed outmoded and irrelevant in modern society.

Music does not need the language of words for it has movements of dance to do its translation

Boondocks' is simply the Tagalog word for mountains.

I do not need to understand words to know he is disappointed I am not a boy. Some things need no translation. And I know, because my body remembers without benefit of words, that men who do not welcome girl-babies will not treasure me as I grow to woman - though he call me princess just because the Guru told him to. I have come so far, I have borne so much pain and emptiness! But men have not yet changed.

Tis light translateth night; 'tis inspiration Expounds experience; 'tis the west explains The east; 'tis time unfolds Eternity.

Time reveals all translation to be paraphrase.

A conversation in English in Finnish and in French can not be held at the same time nor with indifference ever or after a time.

The Spanish for 'vacuum' is aspiradora.

It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition... Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering ... the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him... just as these Schismatics are cut apart...

I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere.

O que quer dizer metalíngua senão tradução? Não se pode falar de uma língua senão em outra língua." Jacques Lacan, L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre

I wish I could go visit them and talk in my own language, the English I knew before I grew thorns on my tongue.

Bangala means something precious and dear. But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree.

I've often wondered why condoms are called French letters.

7. This is a consensus view among scholars today. For one thing, Matthew used Mark as a source for many of his stories, copying out the Greek word for word in some passages. If our Matthew was a Greek translation of a Hebrew original, it would not be possible to explain the verbatim agreement of Matthew with Mark in the Greek itself.

Paul, and all the other authors of the New Testament, wrote in Greek).

In the Hebrew language, the word for "anointed one" is mashiach, from which we get our word messiah. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the translation of mashiach is christos, whence we get our word Christ.

The English word "Almighty" is a bit weak for the Greek term used here: Pantokrator, a rare word, or at least it was before the book of Revelation.

there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.

There are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.

An older, inebriated Scot who looked like he'd been sitting on his barstool all day looked me up and down, then smelled the air. Heh, neebr, goat a deid an'mal in yer bac'pac, or iz it ye tha' bloody stinks? My brain took a moment to translate. Actually, yes, there is a dead animal in my backpack, but I probably stink, too.

Knowing a language, then, is knowing how to translate mentalese into strings of words and vice versa. People without a language would still have mentalese, and babies and many nonhuman animals presumably have simpler dialects. Indeed, if babies did not have a mentalese to translate to and from English, it is not clear how learning English could take place, or even what learning English would mean.