Literal Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

All translation is a compromise - the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic.

— Benjamin Jowett

Good translations are one of the vital necessities of our time.

— Lucas Leiva

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

— Karen Healey

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

— Paul Auster

The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.

— Jorge Amado

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

— Adam Morris

Even though I believe a superlative translation can achieve timelessness, that doesn't mean I think other translators shouldn't attempt other versions. The more the…

— Lydia Davis

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

“It is the nature of languages that a pretty translation is not accurate, and an accurate translation finds its own beauty without help.”

— Fraus-Dolus

It's one of the hardest things to translate anything that's not standard.

— Ann Goldstein

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