Translations Quotes - Page 3

• It's impossible to make a movie out of 'Naked Lunch.' A literal translation just wouldn't work. It would cost $400 million to make and would be banned in every country of the world.

  David Cronenberg

  Country, Countries Of The World, Lunch

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• The original language of Christianity is translation.

  Lamin Sanneh

  Language, Christianity, Originals

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• It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Firsts, Innocence

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

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• Like translation itself, Asymptote is a fluid web reaching out to all sides, bringing texts and readers together, through the most improbable and marvelous of connections.

  Jonathan Littell

  Together, Connections, Sides

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• The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Thousand, Paraphrase, Prettiest

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977”, p.179, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The language of translation ought never to attract attention to itself.

  John Hookham Frere

  Attention, Language, Ought

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• Aimer, ce n'est point nous regarder l'un l'autre,
  mais regarder ensemble dans la meme direction.
  English Translation:
  To love is not to look at each other,
  But to look together in the same direction.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Love Is, Together, Looks

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• I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.

  Jung Chang

  Book, Chinese, Taiwan

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• Translation is not appropriation, as is sometimes claimed; it is a form of listening that then changes how you speak.

  Eliot Weinberger

  Listening, Sometimes, Speak

  Eliot Weinberger (2000). “Anonymous Sources: A Talk on Translators and Translation : Lecture”

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• Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context - which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Mean, Reflection

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• For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.

  Utada Hikaru

  Japan, Cds, Lost

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Language, Complicated

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1984). “Notebooks, 1914-1916”, p.5, University of Chicago Press

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• A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Quality, Language, Equal

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• All language is but a poor translation.

  Franz Kafka

  Ironic, Novelists, Language

  "Franz Kafka And James Baldwin: Blackstar 10/1/16" by Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. January 16, 2016.

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• Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Past

  "Teachers of Wisdom". Book by Igor Kononenko, p. 134, 2010.

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• I want my words to survive translation.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Want

  "For me, England is a mythical place". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2005.

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• The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested.

  Utada Hikaru

  People, Different, Looks

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

  Samuel Johnson

  Language, Trouble, Poet

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.62

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• Photography speaks a universal language that does not need translation, and with an immediacy that the written word lacks. It freezes a moment in time, leaving an indelible image.

  Bianca Jagger

  Photography, Leaving, Doe

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• I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

  Paul Auster

  Tables, Pay, Way

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• The practice of translation rests on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all the same - that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth. Without both of these suppositions, translation could not exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life. Translation is another name for the human condition.

  David Bellos

  Practice, Names, Two

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• If you are interested in Taoism, I would suggest that you read the Way of Life by Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism. I personally prefer the Witter Brynner translation.

  Frederick Lenz

  Taoism, Laos, Way

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• Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

  Harry Mathews

  Writing, Speech, Transformation

  Harry Mathews (2002). “The Human Country: New and Collected Stories”

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• My mother died yesterday, yesterday many years ago. You know, what amazed me the most the next day after her leaving was the fact that the buildings were still in place, the streets were still full of cars running, full of people who were walking, seemingly ignoring that my whole world has just disappeared." (rough translation)

  Marc Levy

  Mother, Running, Years

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• Thanks to the ongoing support of the Government of Ontario, RHF, in partnership with the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, has galvanized Ontario’s best researchers, clinicians and scientists to accelerate the translation of the most promising research into practical solutions. This commitment enables the ongoing leveraging of federal, provincial and private sector funds to allow Canadian SCI researchers to embark on a national and global collective journey towards making a difference in the lives of people with spinal cord injury and other disabilities.

  Rick Hansen

  Commitment, Journey, Differences

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