Translations Quotes - Page 9

• The joy of painting lies precisely in the challenge of memory and the challenge of translation from the lived experience to the two-dimensional or three-dimensional symbol.

  Paul Kane

  Memories, Lying, Two

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• As strange as this may sound, I very seldom read fiction. Because my novels require so much research, almost everything I read is non - fiction - histories, biographies, translations of ancient texts.

  Dan Brown

  Sound, Fiction, Research

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• I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

  Charles Stross

  Couple, May, Terrible

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• There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing.

  James Frey

  Writing, Thinking, Important

  Interview with Toby Litt, tobylitt.wordpress.com. August 1, 2008.

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• I'd done a drawing of the model using only peripheral vision, looking at a spot on the wall to the right of where she sat. It wasn't really a drawing of her I produced; it was a drawing of the cloud of lights and darks she dissolved into when I focused on the spot. You could look at my drawing of this cloud and read it as a nude female figure, though a little translation was required.

  Peter Blegvad

  Wall, Clouds, Light

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there's no way you're gonna find out what it means.

  Frank Zappa

  Mean, Listening, Way

  Interview with Dave Rothman in Oui Magazine, April 1979.

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• Government exists to create and preserve conditions in which people can translate their ideas into practical reality. In the best of times, much is lost in translation. But we try.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Reality, Government, Ideas

  Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford (1979). “The Presidential Campaign 1976: Jimmy Carter. 2 v”

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• I don't know what exactly the translation is but when we do consume something now, something else has to give at some point.

  Dan Ariely

  Giving, Knows

  The Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 18, 2009.

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• In the years since The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Voinovich has sharpened his satire, and Monumental Propaganda is a novel that slashes and rips -- but not on every page. He expands his narrative to accommodate shrewd philosophy and inventive portraiture, a very amusing disquisition on Soviet latrines and a number of outlandish plot developments. In his translation, Andrew Bromfield deftly shifts his tone and tools as required, remaining true to Voinovich's Vonnegut-like playfulness and appreciation of the absurd.

  Ken Kalfus

  Appreciation, Rip, Philosophy

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• He [Mencken] was an autodidact, with all the misplaced confidence and all the astonishing gaps that characterize that breed. Not many of us would venture to write a book about democracy without ever having read de Tocqueville, nor embark on a translation of Nietzsche with only a sketchy knowledge of German.

  John Derbyshire

  Book, Writing, Democracy

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• If you are forced to describe things for someone else, it sharpens your senses. And also your sense of how hard it is to make the translation from the vibrant, multi-faceted world to a sentence that distils it.

  Judith Thurman

  World, Sentences, Senses

  "Ask the Author Live: Judith Thurman on Laura Ingalls Wilder". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. July 31, 2009.

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• Whatever you do, trample down abuses, and love those who love you. Different translation: Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing superstition, and love those who love you.

  Voltaire

  Love, Crush, Abuse

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• Hubble touches people. When you're looking that far out, you're giving people their place in the universe, it touches people. Science is often visual, so it doesn't need translation. It's like poetry, it touches you.

  Story Musgrave

  Science, People, Giving

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• Not to admire, is all the art I know To make men happy, or to keep them so. Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago; And thus Pope quotes the precept to re-teach From his translation; but had none admired, Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired?

  Lord Byron

  Art, Men, Long Ago

  Lord Byron (2017). “Don Juan”, p.263, BookRix

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• We can write the new chapters in a visual language whose prose and poetry will need no translation.

  Ernst Haas

  Writing, Prose And Poetry, Needs

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• Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.

  John Denham

  Genius, Ought

  Sir John Denham (1709). “Poems and Translations: With the Sophy, a Tragedy”, p.114

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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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• Poetry is that which is lost in translation.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Lost, Poetry Is, Lost In Translation

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• Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

  Thomas Paine

  Mean, Information, Language

  Thomas Paine (2016). “The Writings of Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason”, p.86, Thomas Paine

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• 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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• Often touching . . . Monumental Propaganda is a novel that slashes and rips . . . In his translation, Andrew Bromfield deftly shifts his tone and tools as required, remaining true to Voinovich's Vonnegut-like playfulness and appreciation of the absurb.

  Ken Kalfus

  Appreciation, Rip, Touching

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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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• There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth!

  Daniel Wallace

  Mean, Biblical, Italian

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