Quotes About Translation

So we have textual critics who believe desperately in the 44 Alexandrian manuscripts (against more than 5,000 copies favoring the Textus Receptus). They use these to translate all modern New Testaments. But these Alexandrian manuscripts also include the Septuagint Old Testament (with the Apocrypha). They have fallen for a trap.

silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation.

the pope, speaking in English

The two men spoke in German, although von Hessen, who had spent years living in Italy, could also speak Italian

kickplate" in French? An assiette à coup?

So I asked the salesclerk for a jar of confiture de groseilles, which is pronounced "gro-zay." But with my less-than-stellar command of the language, I asked for "confiture de grosses selles" (which I pronounced as "gross sells"). The saleswoman's jaw nearly hit the counter: I'd ordered turd jam…make that big-turd jam.

Except a pot in French is not called a pot, but a casserole. Unless it has two handles, in which case it's a cocotte.

Don't you mean the Vierge Noire, the Black Virgin?" "Uh, yes. Isn't that what I was talking about?" "Daveed, a verge is a penis.

a handheld hose. I couldn't find in my dictionnaire the word for the specific kind of hose my European partner was used to, but Claude knew the right term because, as he told me, he had several Italian clients: a douchette anale.

No objection would be made to teaching the natives of the country to read their own languages in the Roman character. No Arab has ever attempted to teach them the Arabic-Koran, they are called guma, hard, or difficult as to religion. This is not wonderful, since the Koran is never translated, and a very extraordinary desire for knowledge would be required to sustain a man in committing to memory pages and chapters of, to him, unmeaning gibberish.

Every decoding is another encoding.

Englishmen learn Christ's law best in English. Moses heard God's law in his own tongue; so did Christ's apostles.

God's first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation.

We need to be skilled into knowing God and His Word, then act as excellent translators of these things to the people in our churches.

Somehow, what's in our hearts, good or bad is eventually translated into words and deeds.

A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green ..." You're going to end up with a big green painting.

I don't know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people's websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries.

In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

The only good thing ever done by a committee was the King James version.

At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.

I went through a phase of reading lots of Urdu poetry, thanks to the great transliterated versions that have become available.

Isn't it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?