Translators Quotes - Page 4

• When I was 16 years old, I assembled a 2.3 million electron volt beta particle accelerator. I went to Westinghouse, I got 400 pounds of translator steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and I assembled a 6-kilowatt, 2.3 million electron accelerator in the garage.

  Michio Kaku

  Years, Wire, Pounds

  "'Physics Of The Future': How We'll Live In 2100?". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 29, 2011.

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• Translated literature can be fascinating. There's something so intriguing about reading the text second hand - a piece of prose that has already been through an extra filter, another consciousness, in the guise of the translator. Some of my favorite writers who have written in English were doing so without English being their first language, so there's a sense of distance or of distortion there, too. Conrad. Nabokov. These writers were employing English in interesting ways.

  Katie Kitamura

  Distance, Reading, Interesting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.

  John Donne

  Prayer, Memories, Eye

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• The sciences of only one nation, the Greeks, have come down to us, because they were translated through Al-Ma'mun's efforts. He was successful in this direction because he had many translators at his disposal and spent much money in this connection.

  Ibn Khaldun

  Successful, Effort, Greek

  "Muqaddimah" translated by Franz Rosenthal, Princeton University Press, 1981.

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• What is the task of the translator? I think the task depends on the book and on the translator.

  Idra Novey

  Book, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.

  Jonathan Coe

  Country, Book, Two

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• Eve talking to someone on her computer and having trouble with the language translator....."I have two like crimes. Your data and your input on Leclerk would be very helpful"Marie pursed her lips and humor danced in her eyes."It says you would like to have sex with me. I don't think that is correct""Oh, for Christ sake" Eve slammed a fist against the machine.

  Nora Roberts

  Sex, Eye, Thinking

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• 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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• A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark)

  Peter Newmark

  Satisfied, Translations

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• Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

  Vernor Vinge

  Language, Natural, Program

  Vernor Vinge (2010). “Zones of Thought: A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky”, p.257, Hachette UK

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• It was an epiphany when I realized you don't have to call yourself a linguist, a translator, a poet. You can call yourself an artist and you can do all these things.

  Jan Peacock

  Artist, Poet, Epiphany

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• Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase.

  Ali Smith

  Simplicity, Depth, Phrases

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• An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

  Fanny Kemble

  Dream, Memories, Men

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• For hundreds of years the use of the word 'man' has troubled critical scholars, careful translators, and lawyers. Difficulties occur whenever and wherever it is important for truth-seeking purposes to know what is being talked about and the context gives no intimation whether 'man' means just a human being irrespective of sex or means a masculine being and none other.

  Mary Ritter Beard

  Sex, Mean, Men

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• When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.

  Etgar Keret

  Writing, Mean, Biblical

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• Men talk of "the mistakes of Scripture." I thank God that I have never met with any. Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men. But mistakes of the original word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Mistake, Men, Thank God

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• It's important to get a translator who will ask the questions in a sensitive and thoughtful way. Knowing the ethnicity issues, the tribal issues in some places...who your translator is can mean a lot.

  Peter Menzel

  Mean, Thoughtful, Ethnicity

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• I think that if you are sticking to the text, essentially, you're not trying to write your own version of it. I mean, of course, it is your own version of it. And every translator would probably have a different version. But I think that that's what keeps the writers from being individual in English. They may be my English, but I don't think that Ferrante sounds like Levi.

  Ann Goldstein

  Mean, Writing, Thinking

  "Translator Behind Elena Ferrante Novels Says Her Job Is To Be An 'Enabler'". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Linda Wertheimer, www.npr.org. February 20, 2016.

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• The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!

  Manuel Puig

  Tasks, Language, Tension

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• We need to be skilled into knowing God and His Word, then act as excellent translators of these things to the people in our churches.

  Vicky Beeching

  Knowing, People, Church

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• The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts lift us up.

  Barbara Jordan

  Art, Carpe Diem, Differences

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• Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Literature, Publishers

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• The fabliau, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations that are good unclean fun. A popular venture that is keen to paste—épater—everybody (not just the bourgeoisie), it is the art of the single entendre. Highly staged low life, it guffaws at the pious, the prudish, and the priggish. High cockalorum versus high decorum…. The introduction here, like the translator’s note, tells well the story of the comic tales, anonymous for the most part, usually two or three hundred lines long, of which about 160 exist.

  Christopher Ricks

  Art, Fun, Dirty

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• I traveled the world ten times over doing something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I found myself in Tokyo, Japan. I (was in) a Dell Computer commercial, the first thing I had ever done, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the green screens, I fell in love with (everything). The translator was explaining everything to me. It was a passion like I had never felt before. I came back and it took me five years to really accept that that was okay.

  Drew Waters

  Passion, Japan, Years

  Source: www.beliefnet.com

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• Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that's just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English.

  Daniel Kehlmann

  Character, Mouths, Berlin

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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