Translations Quotes - Page 5

• There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.

  Peter Newmark

  Mean, Expression, Always Trying

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• There aren't really rules for painting, but there’s certain facts and fictions about painting. Part of what I do is document another surface and sort of translate it. They’re like translations, and then part of it is fiction, which is invention.

  Vija Celmins

  Fiction, Facts, Painting

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• All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original.

  Henri Bergson

  Faith, Giving, Poetry

  Henri Bergson (1961). “Introduction to metaphysics”

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• Poetry is what is gained in translation.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Poetry Is

  "Raw Material by Derek Mahon - review" by Aingeal Clare, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2012.

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• A song is like a smile. If you meet people from another country, even if you don't speak the same language, you know what a smile means. A song works the same way. Music produces feelings that need no translation.

  Clay Aiken

  Country, Song, Mean

  Clay Aiken, Allison Glock (2004). “Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life”, p.16, Random House

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• For me, every translation is a new book, with the translator inevitably broadening the meaning of the original book in any translation.

  Agustin Fernandez Mallo

  Book, Translators

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Any time having international interviews is a language barrier, you don't know how much you need to simplify what you're saying for it not to be damaged in translation. But culturally, there are some interesting phenomena. I get the feeling that the way rock music gets described in Germany, it is all like Rolling Stone circa 1975, taken to the 10th power. If you're a rock musician, you're part of the counterculture. Your music is like a critique of everything that is wrong with America.

  John Flansburgh

  Taken, Interesting, Feelings

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• There's something to be said about all music being some translation of our languaging, our way of communicating. It's a language. This is a new language.

  Suzanne Ciani

  Language, Music Is, Communicate

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.

  Adam Morris

  Thinking, Translators

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Once I looked into it, I was taken aback to learn that pretty much nothing by João Gilberto Noll was available in English translation. I was confident that I could find an editor and the readership for a translation: Noll is highly respected in Brazil, and at the same time divisive, somewhat like Hilda Hilst. Neither of them enjoys the universal acclaim you might associate with Clarice Lispector, whom everyone adores, myself included. Still, I considered it a tremendous injustice that Noll had not been more widely translated and was determined to rectify it.

  Adam Morris

  Taken, Determined, Injustice

  Source: therumpus.net

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• English can be tricky because there are so many false cognates, but sometimes, as long the idea conveyed is not wrong, these false cognates can themselves offer synonyms or lead to a better alternative word or phrase in translation.

  Adam Morris

  Long, Sometimes, Tricky

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Music is a universal language. You don't have to worry about what is being conveyed. You don't have to try to figure out what could be lost in translation. It goes directly to the pit of your soul. I think that's what music was intended to do.

  Avery Sunshine

  Thinking, Worry, Soul

  Source: www.ebony.com

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• I was reading in the Bible and one translation says that Jesus said that if you publicly will acknowledge me before people, I will acknowledge you before my Father in heaven. So that is a big part of these meetings like Night of Hope, giving people an opportunity to publicly say, "Jesus, I believe you are the messiah, you're Christ, you're my Lord."

  Joel Osteen

  Jesus, Father, Reading

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• There are parallels between the 1960s and now, because during the 1960s, people were being slaughtered, their lives were being taken, there was violence, greed, drugs were rising - just all of this. And my uncle was saying, you've got to come back to faith, hope and love. Now, you get the translation and say faith, hope and charity - faith, hope and love.

  Alveda King

  Uncles, Taken, People

  Source: saynsumthn.wordpress.com

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• Scholars have found that references to Christ in Josephus were deliberately planted in the translation long after it was written, and the Latin references to Christ are not to a person of that name. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there was mention of a particular "teacher of righteousness" who had characteristics somewhat like those attributed to Christ, but it might easily have been someone else.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Teacher, Latin, Sea

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• I suppose that, for me at least, the biggest difference betweenThe Gunslinger Born and the next two story arcs (The Long Road Home and Treachery), is that while Gunslinger Bornwas a translation of an existing novel, the next two arcs are really the stories that I've been weaving since I first started working with Steve King on the Dark Tower back in 2000/2001.

  Robin Furth

  Kings, Home, Dark

  Source: www.graphicnovelreporter.com

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• As you know, transforming such a big book [The Gunslinger Born] into graphic novel format is really a process of translation.

  Robin Furth

  Book, Born, Process

  Source: www.graphicnovelreporter.com

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• I remember having a discussion with [Kaz] about his translation of the word shunyata as "boundlessness," instead of the more traditional "emptiness." I said: "Kaz, everyone is used to the word emptiness for shunyata. This might not sit well with people. He said: "Translator's prerogative!" Then he added, "One cannot assume we know what they meant...." I agreed.

  Joan Halifax

  People, Might, Emptiness

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• Take a look at the number of Bibles on your shelf. Think how grateful you are for the help you've received from various Bible translations and editions over the years.

  Martin Manser

  Grateful, Thinking, Helping

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• My real name isn't Gavin. I was given Gavin Friday by my friends. I'm christened Fionan Hanvey, which is Gaelic and there is no actual English translation. I hated it as a kid but as I grew up I sort of went, "Now I like it."

  Gavin Friday

  Friday, Real, Kids

  Source: bigthink.com

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• My books have been published all over Europe. They read me there, and I want to read them back. I also spend a lot of time in Europe, often meeting writers, and I'm sick of apologizing for the embarrassing shortage of translations in America.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Book, Sick, Apologizing

  "Against Eternal Provincialism: An Interview with Aleksandar Hemon". The Amazon Book Review Interview, www.amazonbookreview.com. December 16, 2009.

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• In translation studies we talk about domestication - translation styles that make something familiar - or estrangement - translation styles that make something radically different. I use a lot of both in my translation, and modernism does both. For instance, if you look at the way James Joyce presents Ulysses, is that domesticating a classic? Think of it as an experiment in relation to a well-known text in another language.

  Elliott Colla

  Thinking, Style, Different

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Take Ezra Pound's translations of poetry from Chinese. He doesn't really know Chinese, and the very strange results that he comes up with aren't all successful, but as a whole it's incredibly successful, moving us away from familiar forms and indicating other forms we might think in or express in.

  Elliott Colla

  Moving, Successful, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• With Ibrahim al-Koni, what I figured out was - and you'll see this in his novels - if your time is limited, make the unit of the chapters small so that you can finish one a day, at least in the first draft. Once you have the first draft it's living, and you can coax it to grow and trim it and reshape it and so on. But get that first draft. I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

  Elliott Colla

  Thinking, Program, Novel

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I wrote Baghdad Central right after translating a great work by Ibrahim al-Koni, who is sort of a master of Arab fiction. In conversations with him I realized that translations have been my MFA program. If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. That's how I've figured it out.

  Elliott Colla

  Writing, Program, Great Work

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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