Concerned Quote by Boris Pasternak

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing.

— Nancy Mitford

I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that…

— Joan Larkin

I haven't done any translating for decades now. It's something I did when I was young.

— Paul Auster

I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.

— Adam Morris

Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I tend to be kind of literal about translation. I think it's important to present the writer as closely as possible.

— Ann Goldstein

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading…

— Daniel Alarcon

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to…

— Lydia Davis

Translated literature can be fascinating. There's something so intriguing about reading the text second hand - a piece of prose that has already been…

— Katie Kitamura

In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it…

— George Henry Lewes

Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing…

— Lawrence Venuti