Translation Quotes

“But what is the opposite of fidelity?' asked Professor Playfair. He was approaching the end of his dialitic; now he needed only to draw it to a close with a punch. 'Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them? We are different, you and I, and the qualia of our consciousnesses are as divergent as two stars at the ends of the universe.

And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.

Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?

We live for such miracles.”
― Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

“The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.”
― Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

“So, you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as the rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty - rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the authors ideology and biases.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.”
― Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
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Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue. Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated. Behold. I give you the Ubermensch. He is this lightning. He is this frenzy.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.”
― Orson Welles

“Reading a poem in translation," wrote Bialek, "is like kissing a woman through a veil"; and reading Greek poems, with a mixture of katharevousa and the demotic, is like kissing two women. Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“All religions are based on obsolete terminology.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“All explicit knowledge is translated knowledge, and all translation is imperfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“Oh, no-" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese- 'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat'.”
― Gordon Korman, The Emperor's Code

“Translation is the art of failure.”
― Umberto Eco

“A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark)”
― Peter Newmark, Manual de traducción (Linguistica / Linguistic)

“So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.”
― Amara Lakhous, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio

“Literary translation is not merely an act of picking words from one language and keeping it by dipping in the vessel of another language. Those words need to be rinsed, washed, carved and decorated as much as possible.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“In literary translations, it is this very articulation of expressions that matters the most to bring home to the readers the full essence of the original text in question.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!”
― Faiz Ahmed Faiz

“Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Poetry emerging from a poet enters into the reader only when it comes within the readers’ 'sphere of intellect. A reader cannot take poetry by expanding it beyond his/her consciousness, rather can take by shrinking it within. Thus, there exists a chance of every poem getting changed while reaching every reader. This ‘getting changed’ is a form of ‘getting translated’, in a way. So, every assimilation of any poem is a translation.”
― Suman Pokhrel, भारत शाश्वत आवाज [Bharat Shashwat Aawaz]

“it is better to have red a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all.”
― Henry Gratton Doyle

“There can never be an absolutely final translation.”
― Robert M. Grant

“I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.”
― Harold Bloom

“Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life… We need to be wary of the suggestion… that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared… The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.”
― Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father

“Don't fret my dear. If art is translation of the ephemeral into observable form, then always remember that it is the translationn that is the craft. The craft is that which can always be improved. But the ephemeral is that which only you have been able to observe, and that which only you have chosen to translate, and so in a way, the ephemeral is you, and it is already beautiful.”
― Jomny Sun, Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too

“Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem