Conviviendo Translation Quotes

Alexander von Humboldt's wide-ranging Views of Nature is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century natural history, at once science and art. Mark W. Person's stunning new translation makes the wonders of this classic accessible to the English-language world of the present. ~ Daniel Walker Howe

These and other inanimate things she saw and experienced. They were real to her. She knew them. They were the codes and touchstones of the world, capable of translation and possession. She owned the crack that made her stumble; she owned the clumps of dandelions whose white heads, last fall, she had blown away; whose yellow heads, this fall, she peered into. And owning them made her part of the world, and the world a part of her. ~ Toni Morrison

Why don't these translation books just include general phrases that could be applied in a variety of situations like, "Say nothing unless it's in English"? ~ Joe Cawley

[T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of. ~ Paul Auster

In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original. ~ Fanny Howe

Part of it may be that translators are paid by the word, so the more carefully they work on a translation, the less they are paid for their time, which means that if they are very careful they may not earn much. And often, the more interesting or unusual the book, the more painstaking they have to be. For one or two difficult books, I took so long over each page that I earned less than a dollar an hour. But I'm not sure this explains why so many people do not respect translators or would simply prefer not to think about them. ~ Lydia Davis

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge. ~ Iris Murdoch

There exists a chance of every poem getting changed while reaching every reader. This 'getting changed' is a form of 'getting translated', in a way. So, every assimilation of any poem is a translation. ~ Suman Pokhrel

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not ge ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself. It is not, of course, translated into another language but it is a translation from the images in the author's mind to that which he is able to put down on paper. Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. It's one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it's transcendent, it's brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire. But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it's never the book that you'd hoped to write. It's smaller than the book you'd hoped to write. It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire. It feels, in short, like a rather inept translation of a mythical great work. The translator, then, is simply moving the book another step along the translation continuum. The translator is translating a translation. ~ Michael Cunningham

Poetry is what is gained in translation. ~ Joseph Brodsky

The essence of things is lost in translation, as love and understanding are lost in expectation. ~ Meeta Ahluwalia

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

Goddess of song, teach me the story
of a hero. ~ Homer

A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation. ~ John Denham

Translations
A literary translation is like a spouse who thinks they can cheat on you because business has brought them to a foreign city. ~ Beryl Dov

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

All religions are based on obsolete terminology. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services. ~ Edward Sapir

Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter. ~ Suzy Kassem

If we expect translation to reproduce the totality of the semantics and affective uses of the original text, then we believe that translation must be loyal to the seminal language system, rather than letting the discourse travel and undertake the adventure of discovering - or creating - a new set of meaning according to the politics of the translation itself. Rigid loyalty to the original in the translated version was, in effect, the intentionality of the translation of the doctrines and precepts that constituted the colonial discourse. ~ Hector Dominguez Ruvalcaba

Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence. ~ George Steiner

Lark frowned. "I thought she was associated with fate. Her Arcana name's Our Lady of Fate."

"As she desired it to be," he said. "But it's a very liberal translation."

I'd thought these Arcana things were set in stone. Now the goalposts were moving.

He downed that shot, then poured another. "She appears to control fate, but she doesn't have any influence over what happens to her. Her power is passive. She doesn't read the future and consciously affect it - not like the Fool does." Aric's gaze grew distant. "Ages ago, Fortune was known more accurately as Lady Luck. The Fool was known as the Hand of Fate. She despised him for that and envied his power. ~ Kresley Cole

A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark) ~ Peter Newmark

I want you so much, he said with such heart-tugging sincerity that to be fair, a translation from Turkish to English would have to flip a coin between "want" and "love. ~ Bob Shacochis

In my life are many windows
and many graves.
Sometimes they exchange
roles:
then a window is closed forever,
then by way of a gravestone
I can see
very far.
(Hebrew-to-English translation by Rabbi Steven Sager) ~ Yehuda Amichai

Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis.
The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand.
(it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation ... ) ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Not everyone who knows how to write can be a writer. Not everyone who knows two languages can be a translator. ~ Nataly Kelly

All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work. ~ Deborah Smith

But when you are week the best way to fortify yourself is to strip the people you fear of the last bit of prestige you're still inclined to give them. Learn to consider them they are, worse than they are in fact and from every point of view. That will release you, set you free, protect you more than you can possibly imagine. It will give you another self. There will be two of you.
That will strip their words and deeds of the obscene mystical fascination that weakens you and makes you waste your time. From then on you'll find their act no more amusing, no more relevant to your inner progress than that of the lowliest pig. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

The new towns of the 1950s and '60s were nothing less than the spatial translation of alienation and control and in these cities power increasingly could relinquish the old forms of advertising in favor of 'the simple organization of the spectacle of objects of consumption, which will only have consumable value illusory to the extent to which they will first of all have been objects of spectacle'
to the extent, that is, they have first appeared on the television screen, which henceforth had to be seen as an urbanistic tool in its own right. ~ Tom McDonough

Beyond the offer tables and online bestseller charts are many other narratives: books that take readers away from what they know, challenge the assumptions that underpin life elsewhere and present a strikingly different world ["How Books Get Lost In translation," Financial Times, January 15, 2015]. ~ Ann Morgan

The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls.
(translation/paraphrase: Terence McKenna) ~ Heraclitus

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings ~ Suman Pokhrel

General editors' preface The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. This series of books will reflect the breadth of work in translation studies and will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at the present time. ~ Lawrence Venuti

TRULY, "thoughts are things," and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches, or other material objects. A ~ Napoleon Hill

I wrote 'Yellow Submarine' for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for 'The Games,' about the Olympic Games. I wrote 'Love Story,' both the novel and the screenplay. I wrote 'RPM' for Stanley Kramer. Plus, I wrote two scholarly books and a 400-page translation from the Latin, and I dated June Wilkinson! ~ Erich Segal

Wise Bear said something in his own language, mouth twisting in disgust as if the words stained his tongue. He caught Vaelin's enquiring gaze and provided a terse translation, "Cat People. ~ Anthony Ryan

Scripture scholars contend that the original language of the Beatitudes should not be rendered as "Blessed are the single-hearted" or "Blessed are the peacemakers" or "Blessed are those who struggle for justice." Greater precision in translation would say, "You're in the right place if...you are single-hearted or work for peace." The Beatitudes is not a spirituality, after all. It's a geography. It tells us where to stand. ~ Gregory J. Boyle

There is a new venue for theory, necessarily impure, where it emerges in and as the very event of cultural translation. This is not the displacement of theory by historicism, nor a simple historicization of theory that exposes the contingent limits of its more generalizable claims. ~ Judith Butler

Every act of communication is a miracle of translation. ~ Ken Liu

Polly Findlay showed real insight and imagination in her production of my translation of Seneca's Thyestes at the Arcola. I enjoyed her use of the space and the detail of her work with the actors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with Light Shining. ~ Caryl Churchill