Quotes About Translation

I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal....It was a way of getting close to different languages, of feeling connected to writers very distant from me in space and time.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that a cover is a sort of translation, that is, an interpretation of my words in another language -- a visual one. It represents the text, but isn't part of it. It can't be too literal. It has to have its own take on the book. Like a translation, a cover can be faithful to at the book, or it can be misleading. In theory, like a translation, it should be in the service of the book, but this dynamic isn't always the case.

Je crois que traduire est la façon la plus profonde, la plus intime de lire quelque chose. Une traduction est une magnifique rencontre dynamique entre deux langues, deux textes, deux écrivains. Elle implique un dédoublement, un renouveau.

Le parole sconosciute rappresentano un abisso vertiginoso, fecondo. Un abisso che contiene tutto ciò che mi sfugge, tutto il possibile.

It has been said by many that the risk, for the author who self-translates, is to rewrite more than translate, given that there are no rules to obey when the only authority is oneself. What is the meaning of obedience, of faithfulness, when the other does not exist. 57

And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?

Translation will open up entire realms of possibilities, unforeseen pathways that will newly guide and inspire the writer's work, and possibly even transform it. For to translate is to look into a mirror and see someone other than oneself.

When I write in Italian, I think in Italian; to translate into English, I have to wake up another part of my brain. I don't like the sensation at all. I feel alienated. As if I'd run into a boyfriend I'd tired of, someone I'd left years earlier. He no longer appeals to me.

C'era una donna, una traduttrice, che voleva essere un'altra persona. Non c'era un motivo chiaro. Era sempre stato così.

Voleva generare un'altra versione di se stessa, nello stesso modo in cui poteva trasformare un testo da una lingua a un'altra.

To translate a book is to enter into a relationship with it, to approach and accompany it, to know it intimately, word by word, and to enjoy the comfort of its company in return.

To translate is to alter one's linguistic coordinates, to grab on to what has slipped away, to cope with exile.

Credo che tradurre sia il modo più profondo, più intimo di leggere qualcosa. Una Traduzione è un bellissimo incontro dinamico tra due lingue, due testi, due scrittori. Implica uno sdoppiamento, un rinnovamento. Nel passato amavo tradurre dal latino, dal greco antico, dal bengalese. È stato un modo di avvicinarmi alle diverse lingue, di sentirmi legata ad autori lontanissimi da me, nello spazio e nel tempo.

What works in one medium does not necessarily always work in the other.

I could list hundreds of words I've come up against in the course of my work that did not exist in the era of which I was writing and for which I never could find a suitably old-time, archaic or obsolete substitute.

I thought that subtitles are boring because they're there generally to serve us with information to make you understand what people are saying in a different language.

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.

Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the original.

The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.

A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.

When you finish anything, people want you to then talk about it. And I think it's almost like a crime. A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it's not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there. The language of film, cinema, is the language it was put into, and the English language – it's not going to translate. It's going to lose.

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, 'Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl'.

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl.