Quotes About Translation

Para el monolingüe no hay sino una lengua desde donde se piensa un solo mundo, y lo distinto siempre se da -si es que se da- peligrosamente: en traducción.

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living.

Perhaps this is why Muslims insist that no translation of the Qur'an is the Qur'an. The true Qur'an is the whole package, indivisible: the words and their meanings, yes, but also the very sounds, even the look of the lettering when the Qur'an is in written form.

the experience of motherhood loses nearly everything in its translation to the outside world. In motherhood a woman exchanges her public significance for a range of private meanings, and like sounds outside a certain range they can be very difficult for other people to identify.

Por la mañana, obstinados todavía en la duermevela que el chirrido horripilante del despertador no alcanzaba a cambiarles por la filosa vigilia, se contaban fielmente los sueños de la noche. Cabeza contra cabeza, acariciándose, confundiendo las piernas y las manos, se esforzaban por traducir con palabras del mundo de fuera todo lo que habían vivido en las horas de tiniebla

Gustav Meyrink. The latter is the author of novels which reflect esoteric knowledge in an exceptionally pure fashion (for this reason, I was later to translate three of Meyrink's novels: Walpurgis Night , The White Dominican and The Angel of the West Window - which I published for Bocca under a pseudonym)

They waited respectfully for him to finish and then they said, their faces slowly disappearing in the gloom, Listen, we'll let you go if you tell us what fuego means in English. Fire, he blurted out, unable to help himself. Oscar--

Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade- all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design.

I tend to read mostly 20th-century fiction, 20th-, 21st-century fiction in Italian.

You should hear the guy who dubs me in Japan. I like him the most. He has a high squeaky voice.

Since my Japanese isn't very good, I had to have an interpreter to communicate with most of the crew.

It must have been fascinating for Bono to have Johnny Cash do a cover of his song, and hear how he translates the words that he has used. And it would be fascinating to see a great director do his take on my work.

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying he wanted me to make up dialogue.

I talked this matter over with Douglas more than once. He did not know French well; but he could understand it and he was a rarely good translator as his version of a Baudelaire sonnet shows. In any dispute as to the value of a word or phrase I should prefer his opinion to Oscar's. But Ross is doubtless right on this point. F.H.]

All language is but a poor translation.

When we do the work of translating and simplifying complex terminology, we allow people to see their agency in the process—to take responsibility for joining and shaping the conversation and for turning words into action.

Inexorably accurate translation from Latin provides a training in observation, analysis, judgment, evaluation, and a sense of linguistic form, clarity, and beauty which is excellent training in the shaping of one's own English expression," asserted Frederic Wheelock.

Oh! You'll find this amusing. I just translated the name of their ship. In their language, it roughly means, 'Big Enough to Kill You.'

She inspected him lying on the deck, and he raised a fist in a gesture of solidarity. "Radiant the Lopen," Rysn said, ". . . um, what do you call a Thaylen who can't walk?" "Not sure, gancha." "Names. From afar." He grinned widely. "Of course," Rysn added. "I'd never stand for that sort of thing." The Lopen about died from laughing. He called to his cousin again, translating the jokes. This time Huio chuckled.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times

Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation...

Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation – a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He

Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.