Desechar Translation Quotes

Surah 57 Ayah 25 from the Sahih International English Translation of Al-Quran.
We have already sent Our messengers with clear evidences and sent down with them the Scripture and the balance that the people may maintain [their affairs] in justice. And We sent down iron, wherein is great military might and benefits for the people, and so that Allah may make evident those who support Him and His messengers unseen. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might. ~ Anonymous

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end … that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, ~ Neil Gaiman

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language. ~ Samuel Johnson

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description. ~ Alan W. Watts

When you play a character, you bring yourself into the character. You get a chance to shine and show your translation for the character and her state of mind. ~ Gal Gadot

Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience ... Moving ... compassionate. ~ Leigh Newman

De wijze heeft geen onwrikbare beginselen. Hij past zich aan anderen aan.
(Free translation into English: The wise man has no firm principles. He adapts to others.) ~ Lao-Tzu

Odi et amo; quare fortasse requiris, nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
(my translation: I hate and I love, you ask why I do this, I do not know, but I feel and I am tormented) ~ Catullus

Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing, which makes it so difficult in this age of fervent belief and ideology, this age or greed and screed. ~ Gregory Rabassa

THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY is ostensibly an autobiography but in truth it is much more than that. In this remarkably fine new translation, Anthea Bell perfectly captures Stefan Zweig's glorious evocation of a lost world, Vienna's golden age, in which he grew up and flourished. ~ Ronald Harwood

I read with interest Max Muller's book, India - What Can It Teach Us? and the translation of the Upanishads published by the Theosophical Society. All this enhanced my regard for Hinduism, and its beauties began to grow upon me. It did not, however, prejudice me against other religions. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence. ~ Harold Bloom

I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,
or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Like Hamlet, Goethe's Faust offers a wide panorama of scenes from the vulgar to the sublime, with passages of wondrous poetry that can be sensed even through the veil of translation. And it also preserves the iridescence of its modern theme. From it Oswald Spengler christened our Western culture 'Faustian,' and others too have found it an unexcelled metaphor for the infinitely aspiring always dissatisfied modern self.
Goethe himself was wary of simple explanations. When his friends accused him of incompetence in metaphysics, he replied. 'I, being an artist, regard this as of little moment. Indeed, I prefer that the principle from which and through which I work should be hidden from me. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Yuyeh sesh," Tolya called after her in Shu.
"Ni weh sesh," she shouted over her shoulder. And then she was gone.
"What does that mean?"
"It's something our father taught us," Tolya replied. "Yuyeh sesh: 'despise your heart.' But that's the direct translation. The real meaning is more like 'do what needs to be done - be cruel if you have to.'"
"What's the other part?"
"Ni weh sesh? 'I have no heart. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The History of Ireland in two words: Ah well.

The Invasion by the Vikings: Ah well.

The Invasion by the Normans. The Flight of the Earls, Mr Oliver Cromwell. Daniel O'Connell, Robert Emmett, The Famine, Charles Stewart Parnell, Easter Rising, Michael Collins, Éamon De Valera, Éamon De Valera again (Dear Germany, so sorry to learn of the death of your Mr Hitler), Éamon De Valera again, the Troubles, the Tribunals, the Fianna Fáil Party, The Church, the Banks, the eight hundred years of rain: Ah well.

In the Aeneid Virgil tells it as Sunt lacrimae rerum, which in Robert Fitzgerald's translation means 'They weep for how the world goes', which is more eloquent than Ah well but means the same thing. ~ Niall Williams

It is quite natural, then, that the solidly unionized professional paraphrast experiences a surge of dull hatred and fear, and in some cases real panic, when confronted with the possibility that a shift in fashion, or the influence of an adventurous publishing house, may suddenly remove from his head the cryptic rosebush he carries or the maculated shield erected between him and the specter of inexorable knowledge. As a result the canned music of rhymed versions is enthusiastically advertised, and accepted, and the sacrifice of textual precision applauded as something rather heroic, whereas only suspicion and bloodhounds await the gaunt, graceless literalist groping around in despair for the obscure word that would satisfy impassioned fidelity and accumulating in the process a wealth of information which only makes the advocates of pretty camouflage tremble or sneer. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Because I grew up around Danny and Phillip, I discovered the truth about the male language very early in life. What I learned is there are three basic responses that most guys will use when shouldered with the major task of having to answer the question, How do I look? by the fairer sex.
Although I have never confirmed it, I am convinced that boys are taken aside in school, probably in fifth grade when the girls watch the film about getting their periods, and are taught the following three responses:

You look like shit. (Translation: You look bad. Just go back to bed and start over tomorrow. I really shouldn't be seen with you like this.)

You look fine. (Translation: You look good enough to be seen with.)

You look hot. (Translation: I want you.)

They also must teach them there is only one acceptable variation to these responses and to use it sparingly. The variation is simple. They just throw a REALLY into the sentence. The following are examples I have witnessed:

JJ, you REALLY look like shit. (Translation: You must be very hung over, or sick, or having an extremely bad hair day. I really don't want to be seen with you.)

REALLY, JJ, your hair looks fine. (Translation: Your hair looks the same to me as it always does, even though you spent an hour fixing it, so stop messing with it and lets go because you look good enough to be seen with.) And…

(Insert cheerleader's name here) looks REALLY Hot. ~ Jillian Dodd

Trust in Creation which is made fresh daily and doesn't suffer in translation. This God does not work in especially mysterious ways. The sun here rises and sets at six exactly. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. A bird raises its brood in the forest and a greenheart tree will only grow from a greenheart seed. He brings drought sometimes followed by torrential rains and if these things aren't always what I had in mind, they aren't my punishment either. They're rewards, let's say for the patience of a seed. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I will always be a translation. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

(True,) the white hole said. (My name is Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd'enagouni-) and at the same time he went flickering through a pattern of colors that was evidently the visual translation. ~ Diane Duane

We will never have any memory of dying.

We were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note -
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don't remember a single detail
and haven't kept even a trace
of your first light.

It's well known that we are born.

It's well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fishermen's quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.

It's well known that we were all born.

But if that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till ev ~ Pablo Neruda

I was in Cancun, Mexico, sitting in a disappearing-edge swimming pool, on a bar stool that was actually under the water, watching palm trees sway in a sultry breeze against the unmistakable aqua splendor of the Caribbean Sea; drinking coconut, lime, and tequila from a scooped-out pineapple, with salt spray of breaking surf and sun kissing my skin.
Translation: I'd died and gone to heaven. ~ Karen Marie Moning

All religions are based on obsolete terminology. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded. ~ Edmund White

I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course – I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother's front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature. ~ Mary Karr

As there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without a jarring and a harshness somewhere. ~ Samuel Butler

Translation is the other side of a tapestry. ~ Leonardo Sciascia

I feel so rude-O don't even know your name.
He bowed. I'm Erik.
Erik?
Yes.
Huh. I expected something a bit different.
He shrugged. Well, that's the closet translation. ~ Kiera Cass

If creative fiction writing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete, there are three possible grades of such writing: translating an old (known) abstraction (theme or thesis) through the medium of old fiction means (that is, characters, events or situations used before for that same purpose, that same translation) -- this is most of the popular trash; translating an old abstraction through new, original fiction means -- this is most of the good literature; creating a new, original abstraction and translating it through new, original means. This, as far as I know, is only me -- my kind of fiction writing. ~ Ayn Rand

I have nothing but wastes and wilds of self-translation before me for many miserable months to come. ~ Samuel Beckett

I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

Let twelve angels come into being to rule over chaos and the underworld. And look, from the cloud there appeared an angel whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means in translation 'rebel'; others call him Yaldabaoth. ~ Rodolphe Kasser

Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of another text. No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this argument can be turned around without losing any of its validity: all texts are original because every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it constitutes a unique text. ~ Octavio Paz

The writers of Luke and Matthew, for instance, in seeking to make the life of Jesus conform to Old Testament prophecy, insist that Mary conceived as a virgin (Greek parthenos), harking to the Greek rendering of Isaiah 7:14. Unfortunately for fanciers of Mary's virginity, the Hebrew word alma (for which parthenos is an erroneous translation) simply means "young woman," without any implication of virginity. It seems all but certain that the Christian dogma of the virgin birth, and much of the church's resulting anxiety about sex, was the ~ Sam Harris

Sestrilla, hafelina
Jue amourasestrilla
Awou jue selaviena
En patre jue
Translation:
Beloved one, little cat
I love you for all time
In this time
And all others ~ Christine Feehan

The British call junzi a "gentleman," no surprise. The Americans have no gentlemen, so they translate junzi as "the superior man." The Germans have no gentlemen either, and "superior man" is reserved, so they call junzi an "edler" meaning a person of noble blood. To sum up, all Europeans call junzi anything but junzi, which is quite a scandal. ~ Thorsten J. Pattberg

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment - but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. ~ Mark Twain

That you should not be here when something we've both wanted happens is no new thing for me. Today too, as always, you're not here. ~ Sachin Kundalkar

IT IS NOT ABOUT SYMPATHY OR LIKEABILITY, EITHER. EMPATHY IS ABOUT THE TRANSLATION OF FEELING. ~ Film Crit Hulk!

And yet, as you all know, joining humanity is never a simple matter. By beginning to live the same temporality as Westerners, the Japanese now had to live two temporalities simultaneously. On the one hand, there was Time with a capital "T," which flows in the West. On the other hand, there was time with a small "t," which flows in Japan. Moreover, from that point on, the latter could exist only in relation to the former. It could no longer exist independently, yet it could not be the same as the other, either. If I, as a Japanese, find this new historical situation a bit tragic, it's not because Japanese people now had a live in two temporalities. It's rather because as a result of having to do so, they had no choice but to enter the asymmetrical relationship that had marked and continues to mark the modern world - the asymmetrical relationship between the West and the non-West, which is tantamount, however abstractly, to the asymmetrical relationship between what is universal and all the rest that is merely particular. ~ Minae Mizumura

Adventure comes with no guarantees or promises. Risk and reward are conjoined twins - and that's why my favorite piece of advice needs translation but no disclaimers: Fortes fortuna juvat. 'Fortune favors the brave,' the ancient Roman dramatist Terrence declared. In other words, there are many good reasons not to toss your life up in the air and see how it lands. Just don't let fear be one of them. ~ Mary South

But very affectionately. Since you're up on the language, why don't we finish the night off by ... "
She rose up to whisper in his ear, ending the provocative Italian with a quick nip on his lobe.
"Ummm." He didn't have a clue what she'd said, but the blood had cheerfully drained out of his
head. "I think I'm going to need a translation on that one. ~ Nora Roberts

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

Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks