Translation Quotes · Page 6

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

— Benedetto Croce

Mathematics to me is like a language I don’t speak though I admire its literature in translation.

— David Quammen

“[reading a work in translation] is like viewing a piece of Flemish tapestry on the wrong side.”

— Cervantes

Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.

— Paul Valery

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

— William Zinsser

“Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself.”

— E.B. White

The translation of social media buzz does not really happen. Films do well through word of mouth.

— Varun Dhawan

“As long as human beings speak different languages, the need for translation will continue.”

— Nataly Kelly

It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an…

— Ngugi wa Thiong'o

“The translation that causes our birth is a process in which a physical form is “put around” our invisible purpose, allowing us…

— Touré Roberts

Como se acuerda con los pajarosla traduccion de sus idiomas?How is the translation of their languages Arranged with the birds?

— Pablo Neruda

If I make a speech, I need a translator. But music does not need a translation. People understand me through the sound.…

— Mstislav Rostropovich

I think translations should convey the feelings expressed in the original work. This is what I have believed in and practised.

— Gulzar

I don't write thinking directly about what I'm feeling, usually. I just let myself write whatever comes out without it necessarily being…

— Julia Holter

Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.

— Kenneth Rexroth

In translation you have to get it right, you have to be precise in what you're doing. You have to attempt what…

— Elliott Colla

“In a French accent developed through a lifetime of using English I said, 'Hello sir, I would like to row the English…

— Tim Fitzhigham

“Similarly, Haynes (1998, viii) notes that many professional translators, and their organizations, remain remarkably uninformed with regards to the progress made in…

— Lynne Bowker

“And on the subject of naming animals, can I just say how happy I was to discover that the word yeti, literally…

— Neil Gaiman

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble…

— Samuel Johnson

Wo die Liebe herrscht, da gibt es keinen machtwillen, und wo die macht den vorrang hat, da fehlt die Liebe. Das eine…

— Carl Jung

I wrote 'Yellow Submarine' for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for 'The Games,' about the Olympic Games. I wrote 'Love Story,'…

— Erich Segal

When a translation is very good, it is fascinating to see how the book changes and yet stays the same. I think…

— Per Petterson

Regarding R. H. Blyth: For translations, the best books are still those by R. H. Blyth. . . .

— Reginald Horace Blyth

Something may have been lost in translation, but it certainly wasn't love

— Erich Segal

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

— Jonathan Lethem

Of course we may have any number of translations of a given text - the more the better, really.

— Lydia Davis

Translation presents not merely a paradigm but the utmost case of engaged literary interpretation

— John Felstiner

What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

— Robert Fitzgerald

“silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation.”

— David G. Benner

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

— Rumi

Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.

— Gunter Grass

Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.

— Ngugi wa Thiong'o

“Translation can never do more than the approximate,so we shall, at least, be gloriously inaccurate.”

— Karen Healey

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

— Ned Rorem

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

— Ernst Haas

There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.

— Walter Benjamin

Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.

— Joseph Brodsky

One can translate an editorial but not a poem. For one can go across the border naked but not without one's skin;…

— Karl Kraus