Translations Quotes - Page 10

• The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

  Steven Pinker

  Baby, Age, Tourists

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• A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

  Gregory Rabassa

  Reading, Language, Unchanging

  Gregory Rabassa (2006). “If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents”, p.89, New Directions Publishing

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• There are stories that are by and for Latin Americans, where a certain amount of cultural fluency is expected, where we can delight in the details, the humor, the particularities of speech, of dialects. Something is always lost in translation; we know instinctively that this is the case. A Radio Ambulante story looks at Latin America from the inside.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Latin, America, Radio

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing, which makes it so difficult in this age of fervent belief and ideology, this age or greed and screed.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Greed, Age, Crafts

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• The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.

  Lewis Thomas

  Rest Of Life, Language, Mark

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Readable, faithful, accurate-what more could you ask for in a modern translation of the Bible? GOD'S WORD Translation is a great version for enhancing your love for God's Word. I recommend it.

  Ann Spangler

  Faithful, God Love, Modern

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• A massive and brilliant accomplishment--the first English translation of the original Grimm brothers' fairy tales. The plain telling is that much more forceful for its simplicity and directness, particularly in scenes of naked self-concern and brutality. Hate, spite, love, magic, all self-evident, heartbreaking, delightful. I will return to this book over and over, no doubt about it.

  Donna Jo Napoli

  Brother, Hate, Book

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• I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow!

  Rex Stout

  Book, Stories, Letters

  "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I." by Sandra Schmidt in Life magazine (p. 132), December 10, 1965.

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• The goal of Bible translation is: be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

  Leland Ryken

  Biblical, Goal, Transparent

  "Leland Ryken Interview Differences in Bible Translations". Christian Publishing House Interview, christianpublishinghouse.co. October 10, 2016.

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• Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.

  Italo Calvino

  Country, Important, World

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• The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.

  August Wilson

  Artist, Play, Giving

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• There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation.

  John Dryden

  Giving, Grace, Diction

  John Dryden (1866). “Poetical Works: With a Memoir”, p.129

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• If men were able to be convinced that art is a precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artist? Or would they begin a careful translation of new art forms into social navigation charts? I am curious to know what would happem if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Blow, Technology

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

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• On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.

  Albert Einstein

  Grease, Brain, Use

  Quoted by Otto Stern in an interview with Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962.

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• Total experiences, of which there are many kinds, tend again and again to be apprehended only as revivals or translations of the religious imagination. To try to make a fresh way of talking at the most serious, ardent, and enthusiastic level, heading off the religious encapsulation, is one of the primary intellectual tasks of future thought.

  Susan Sontag

  Religious, Talking, Imagination

  "Styles of Radical Will" by Susan Sontag, (p. 69), 1966.

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• How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

  Salman Rushdie

  Betrayal, Fall, Angel

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• In art as in life, some things need no translation.

  Paula Vogel

  Art, Needs

  Paula Vogel (1992). “The Baltimore Waltz”, p.24, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• Mathematics to me is like a language I don’t speak though I admire its literature in translation.

  David Quammen

  Literature, Language, Speak

  "Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic". Book by David Quammen, 2012.

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• A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.

  Jonathan Swift

  Running, Book, Greek

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• I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.

  William Cowper

  Sound, Tasks, Venture

  William Cowper (1851). “The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence”, p.379

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• Meaning can be usually be approximated, but often by sacrificing style. When I review my translations into Spanish, that's what I'm most concerned with, reading the sentences aloud in Spanish to make sure they sound the way I want them to. To be honest, I much prefer being translated into Greek or Japanese; in those cases, you have no way of being involved, and no pressure.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Reading, Sacrifice, Greek

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Reading, Would Be, Benefits

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.

  Max Muller

  Country, Fate, Years

  "The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller" edited by Georgina Müller, 1902.

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• Pour e  crire ce livre essentiel, le seul livre vrai, un grand e  crivain n'a pas, dans le sens courant, a'   l'inventer puisqu'il existe de j a'   en chacun de nous, mais a'   le traduire. To write the essential book, the only true book, a great writerdoesnot needto invent becausethebook already exists inside each one of us and merely needs translation.

  Marcel Proust

  Book, Writing, Essentials

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• You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.

  Robert Frost

  Mean, Littles, Lost

  "Robert Frost: A Backward Look". Book by Louis Untermeyer, January 1, 1964.

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