Translations Quotes - Page 17

• Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets.

  Richard M. Weaver

  School, Our World, Greek

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences”, p.167, University of Chicago Press

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• I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, Rude, Wish

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.83, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language.

  Moses Finley

  Evil, Greek, Common

  "Democracy Ancient And Modern". Book by Moses Finley (Second Edition). Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 44, 1985.

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• The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Book, Character

  Henry David Thoreau (1939). “Walden: or, Life in the woods”

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• I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.

  Taryn Simon

  Communication, Night, Space

  "Taryn Simon's Visual Babel". Interview with Lauren Cornell, www.newyorker.com. August 2, 2012.

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• Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the world.

  Tom Chatfield

  Book, Mean, Cutting

  "Do writers need paper?" by Tom Chatfield, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk. October 20, 2010.

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• If you just read the book, you're taking in the narrative, you're taking in the characters, you're understanding it in a certain way. If you make a movie it's really an act of translation.

  James Franco

  Book, Character, Understanding

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• Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere 'Vivam':
  Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.
  Believe me, wise men don't say 'I shall live to do that', tomorrow's life is too late; live today.
  Variant translation: Tomorrow will I live, the fool does say; Today itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday.

  Martial

  Wise, Time, Believe

  'Epigrammata' bk. 1, no. 15

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• The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.

  Gore Vidal

  New York, Writing, Worst

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.

  Tom Stoppard

  Sound, Actors, Done

  Source: news.postimees.ee

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• The translation process becomes a highly subjective thing - turning reds and blues into black-and-whiteness. It's really bizarre for me.

  Robert Longo

  Black, Bizarre, Process

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Vices, World, Language

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• No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life.

  Roger Bacon

  Wise, Men, Length Of Life

  "Opus Tertium". Book by Roger Bacon, p. 91, 1267.

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• He took a bite, swallowed. "God. If asparagus tasted like that all the time, I'd be vegetarian, too." Some people in a lacquered wooden boat approached us on the canal below. One of them, a woman with curly blond hair, maybe thirty, drank from a beer then raised her glass towards us and shouted something. "We don't speak Dutch," Gus shouted back. One of the others shouted a translation: "The beautiful couple is beautiful.

  John Green

  Beautiful, Couple, Beer

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• Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Views, Language, Obscure

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• There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.

  Edith Hamilton

  Book, Humility, Unique

  "Three Greek Plays". Book by Edith Hamilton, 1937.

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• The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

  George Orwell

  Language, Foolish, Easier

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have always maintained that translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text. The translator cannot ignore "lesser" words, but must consider every jot and tittle.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Reading, Giving, Language

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• Well, the role of our "allies," in my view, is a scandal. 53 other countries cooperated in the kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition," of suspected terrorists to black sites where they were administered enhanced interrogation techniques, which by the way is a direct, literal translation of "verschärfte Vernehmung" right out of the Gestapo manual.

  Ray McGovern

  Country, Views, Interrogation Techniques

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Unfortunately, unless the job description included a translation of the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, I was dreadfully under-qualified.

  Rachel Vincent

  Jobs, Description, Prologue

  Rachel Vincent (2016). “Stray”, p.65, MIRA

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• A national language is a band of national union.

  Noah Webster

  Band, Unions, Language

  Noah Webster (1951). “Dissertations on the English Language”

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• It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Greek, Useless, Language

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

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• Opens up a whole new view of Beckett. The strong mutual attraction between Beckett and Cunard may help explain the leftist political views he expressed both in these superb and long-neglected translations for Negro and elsewhere in his work.

  Barney Rosset

  Strong, Views, Mutual Attraction

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• Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary)- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper will result in a story.

  Roberta Gellis

  Dream, Writing, Stories

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• Like her friend and admirer Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst was a passionate explorer of the sacred and the profane, the pure and the obscene, and shows, in this discomfiting, hypnotic work, just how rarely those categories are what they seem. The translation is excellent - what a rare relief.

  Benjamin Moser

  Relief, Passionate, Sacred

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