Translator Quotes

43 quotes by 40 authors

The CIA will only hire people with impeccable credentials to be a translator. 'Impeccable credentials' means you've never lived outside the United States. — Michael Bloomberg
As a physician and as a pilot, I think it lets me be a pretty good translator having one foot in the medical world and… — David M. Brown
There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something… — Edith Hamilton
A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print — Gregory Rabassa
I have always maintained that translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text. The translator cannot ignore "lesser" words, but must… — Gregory Rabassa
Because powerful images are fixed in the mind more readily than words, the photographer needs no interpreter. A photograph means the same thing all over… — Arthur Rothstein
Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees,… — John Donne
Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the… — Anne Michaels
The fabliau, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations… — Christopher Ricks
Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in… — Friedrich Schleiermacher
The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out… — Alma Guillermoprieto
A poet is the translator of the silent language of nature to the world. — Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Eve talking to someone on her computer and having trouble with the language translator....."I have two like crimes. Your data and your input on Leclerk… — Nora Roberts
A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him. — Samuel Johnson
All nonfiction writers, whether they like it or not, are translators. The translator is the perfect journalist. The best journalism endeavors to convey an essential… — Ilan Stavans
In addition to pumping the blood of life within our bodies, we may think of the heart as a belief-to-matter translator. It converts the perceptions… — Gregg Braden
There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means… — Peter Newmark
A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark) — Peter Newmark
As a true translator you will take care not to translate word for word. — Horace
What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing. — Robert Fitzgerald

Who Wrote These Translator Quotes

40 authors contributed a total of 43 Translator Quotes, led by these top contributors: