Every act of communication is an act of translation.

“All writing is an act of translation.”

— Maya Jasanoff

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

Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing, which makes it so difficult in this age…

— Gregory Rabassa

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

— Gregory Rabassa

Teaching translation is more of an editing job. You act as editor. But you can have fun with it.

— Gregory Rabassa

A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

— Gregory Rabassa

Where names of people or places would mean little to a contemporary reader, I figured "translation errors" could create interesting new meanings.

— Hal Duncan

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of…

— Marilyn Hacker

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators…

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.

— Rumi

A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the…

— David Nicholls

The translation process becomes a highly subjective thing - turning reds and blues into black-and-whiteness. It's really bizarre for me.

— Robert Longo

The translation called good has original value as a work of art.

— Benedetto Croce

“My goal is to act as a faithful interpreter, preserving as much of the original's nuances of meaning as possible without embellishment or omission.…

— Ken Liu

Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our…

— Richard M. Weaver