Quotes About Translation

A real translation is transparent.

True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

Inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content.

Throughout her life, she excelled at being able to translate scientific problems—such as those involving trajectories, fluid flows, explosions, and weather patterns—into mathematical equations and then into ordinary English. This talent helped to make her a good programmer.

But no verse, not Stanhope's, not Shakespeare's, not Dante's could rival the original, and this was the original, and the verse was but the best translation of a certain manner of its life. The glory of poetry could not outshine the clear glory of the certain fact, and not any poetry could hold as many meanings as the fact.

I tell them to bring him in. He comes in smiling in triumph. And he can't speak English. After his hours of waiting we cannot talk. I feel rather sorry for him and we do our best. Finally, with the aid of about everyone in the hotel he manages to ask: "Do you like France?" "Yes," I answer. He is satisfied.

You can't translate something that was never in a language in the first place.

The truth is that if we are to have translation at all we must have periodical retranslation. There is no such thing as translating a book into another language once and for all, for a language is a changing thing. If your son is to have clothes it is no good buying him a suit once and for all: he will grow out of it and have to be reclothed.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

The Egyptian word Pir-em-us meant to them something of great vertical height. From this the Greek form Pyramis, or the plural Pyramides was formed.

The broad use of state in Hegelese presents translation problems. Marx's early formulations, in the Hegelian spirit, often come close to counterposing the state concept (the ideal state) against what we would now understand by the term.

A trebuit sa ma multumesc cu a mi se spune Erra, caci atunci cand zeul limbii le-a dat francezilor alfabetul, litera h a ramas incuiata in biblioteca, iar francezii sufera de pe urma acestei pierderi si azi. Pentru ei, heroian e eroina, iar hotelul e otel.

An ideal translation should, I believe, reproduce the effect of the original, but I have found that the best any translator can even hope for is to reproduce the effect that the originals have had on him. (Preface, vi)

Please wait,' she said in Spanish, then repeated the words, 'Esperen, por favor,' remembering that the single verb meant both to wait and hope. This extraordinary language, she thought.

Math is "maths," an elevator is a "lift," a truck is a "lorry," a flashlight is a "torch," and "crisps" are what they call potato chips, while "chips" over here means French fries. Just as riding the double-decker buses thrills me, I get a thrill out of hearing people talk.

Football means soccer, squash is soda, bonkers is nuts—I'm going to need an interpreter or something.

Akroyd!" Sunny cried, a phrase which here means "Roger.

Life is like this, and literature, imaginary conversations and true stories mingling like languages in translation.

The language of Homer lay still further off. Imagine a twenty-first-century Texan reading Chaucer.

Que nadie presuma de saber traducir los sentimientos de una mujer joven al obtener la seguridad de un amor para el que apenas se atrevía a guardar una esperanza

but for poetry one needs one's native tongue. The voice of the soul is not so easily translated.

It's not a natural translation, transition, to take something from stage to screen. Onstage your action is communicated through the spoken word primarily, and on screen it's communicated through pictures. So it's always been kind of unnatural to take something that lives on the stage and turn it into moving pictures.

Writing about our gods in English is unnatural, but I believe language is just a carrier - a means to an end.

I think a lot of writers are unrealistic about having their books translated into film.