A translator is essentially a reader and we all read…

I have always maintained that translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text. The translator cannot ignore "lesser" words, but…

— Gregory Rabassa

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…

— Ann Goldstein

As a true translator you will take care not to translate word for word.

— Horace

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

— Peter Newmark

I think every translator would tell you that when they look back at a poem they have translated, they want to pencil in changes.…

— Jesse Lee Kercheval

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…

— Ali Smith

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…

— Peter Menzel

It seems more than likely that the translating of poetry is going to rub off on the translator if he or she is a…

— Ron Padgett

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

— William Zinsser

A poet is the translator of the silent language of nature to the world.

— Rufus Wilmot Griswold

I think that being an editor, someone who works with words, is very good training for being a translator because it trains you to…

— Ann Goldstein

the translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and has to…

— Lydia Davis

Please, never despise the translator. He's the mailman of human civilization.

— Alexander Pushkin

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

— Idra Novey

The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words…

— Lydia Davis