Quotes About Translation

Arabic gives English technical terms such a nadir, azimuth, and zenith.

Vaya por Dios! Se avecina una buena tormenta. Fina volvió a la sala. Esta vez fue derecha a la llave de la luz y encendió las lámparas sin preocuparse de la reacción de su marido. Pero el doctor Freire no hizo ningún comentario. Dijo: «¿Has oído, Fina? Los ratones andan por el desván». De inmediato, tradujo literalmente la frase al inglés. El doctor Kimball hizo un gesto de entender el significado. Los ratones. Los truenos. Rieron.

It's called Betty Blue," he said. "You watch, I'll translate.

there seems to be no good reason to doubt that Alfred could have done at least some translating,

now Andrée told me that if she had taken up athletic pastimes, it was under orders from her doctor, to cure her neurasthenia, her digestive troubles, but that her happiest hours were those which she spent in translating one of George Eliot's novels

The design of God was, that his word should be always read and used in that language which was commonly understood by them unto whom he granted the privilege thereof; nor could any of the ends of his wisdom and goodness in that merciful grant be otherwise attained.

Not a big intellectual, he'd nevertheless spent an entire summer reading an English translation of Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust's À la recherché du temps perdu while knitting together the web of a major crack gang that spread over the Twin Cities. He couldn't read French, but the book had made him want to learn the language; he'd just never had time.

The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice. It

Lee watched him for a while before he went back to his kitchen. He lifted the breadbox and took out a tiny volume bound in leather, and the gold tooling was almost completely worn away—The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in English translation.

The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.' Don't

Classical music's ability to translate emotional themes is fantastic.

Merkabah is translated as either meaning the throne of god or chariot. Both definitions imply a means of spiritual ascension, not a physical one. They only have it partly right.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Like everyone who's ever translated this text, I had some fun.

I withdrew from active work among deficients, and began a more thorough study of the works of Itard and Séguin. I felt the need of meditation. I did a thing which I had not done before, and which perhaps few students have been willing to do,—I translated into Italian and copied out with my own hand, the writings of these men, from beginning to end, making for myself books as the old Benedictines used to do before the diffusion of printing.

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.

Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they're no good.

A mis traductores, que han tenido la paciencia y el arte de reconstruir el habla y los silencios de mis montevideanos en más de veinte lenguas. (La borra del café)

Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...

You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman: she is either beautiful or faithful.

Andrew Walls, "It is a delightful paradox that the more Christ is translated into the various thought forms and life systems which form our various national identities, the richer all of us will be in our common Christian identity."[155]

Although it telescopes much history to put it this way, Chalcedon may be said to have marked the successful translation of the Christian faith out of its Semitic milieu (where words and concepts were shaped primarily by the revelation of the Old Testament) into the Hellenistic milieu (where words and concepts were shaped primarily by traditions of Greek thought and Roman might).

Because the work of Chalcedon faithfully translated scriptural teaching, the Hellenistic world could now express the wonders of God in its own conceptual language. Both synthesis and translation would need to happen again and again and again.