Intraprendere English Translation Quotes

I want to type one of my books into a free online translation website, and convert it from English to German and then publish the results as an exercise in the absurd. ~ Jarod Kintz

I'm a Russian and all I know of Russia is what I've read. I yearn for the broad fields of golden corn and the forests of silver beech that I've read of in books and though I try and try, I can't see them with my mind's eye. I know Moscow from what I've seen of it at the cinema. I sometimes rack my brain to picture to myself a Russian village, the straggling village of log houses with their thatched roofs that you read about in Chekov, and it's no good, I know that what I see isn't that at all. I'm a Russian and I speak my native language worse than I speak English and French. When I read Tolstoi and Dostoievsky it is easier for me to read them in a translation. I'm just as much a foreigner to my own people as I am to the English and French. You who've got a home and a country, people who love you, people whose ways are your ways, whom you understand without knowing them - how can you tell what it is to belong nowhere? ~ W. Somerset Maugham

On the surface, ojalá translates to "hopefully" in English. But that's just on paper, merely the dictionary definition. The reality is that there are some words that defy translation; their meaning contains a whole host of things simmering beneath the surface. There's beauty contained in the word, more than the flippancy of an idle hope. It speaks to the tenor of life, the low points and the high, the sheer unpredictability of it all. And at the heart of it, the word takes everything and puts it into the hands of a higher power, acknowledging the limits of those here on earth, and the hope, the sheer hope, the kind you hitch your life to, that your deepest wish, your deepest yearning will eventually be yours. ~ Chanel Cleeton

As Einstein once wrote (more ringingly in German than in this English translation by one of us [DG]) to honor Isaac Newton: Look unto the stars to teach us How the master's thoughts can reach us Each one follows Newton's math Silently along its path. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well ... English has fallen short. ~ Marina Warner

Shen Nung was more than just a ruler. To that end, his name's English translation is "divine farmer. ~ Josh Chetwynd

The French expression 'cul-de-sac' describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word 'de,' for instance is a very common French world, I would be certain that 'de' means 'of.' The word 'sac' is less common, but I can fairly certain that it means something like 'mysterious circumstances.' And the word 'cul' is such a rare French word that I am forced to guess at its translation, and my guess is that in this case it would mean 'At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment,' so that the expression 'cul-de-sac' here means 'At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment of mysterious circumstances. ~ Lemony Snicket

Farsi Couplet:
Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast
Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest


English Translation:
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise. ~ Amir Khusrau

I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is. ~ Maya Angelou

What's this bit in Chinese that keeps popping up?" he said. "Xuĕ Lóng?"
"It's the codename for the operation."
"What does it mean?"
"Xuĕ Lóng is a mythical Chinese creature said to bring darkness, cold, and death."
"What's the translation?"
"In English, it would be called a snow dragon. ~ Brad Thor

During the 20th century, Chechnya was written about by local poets and novelists, as well as writers from Russia and Central Asia, but very little is available in English translation. ~ Anthony Marra

This was in [Orwell's] 1946 'Politics and the English Language,' an essay that despite its date (and its title's basic redundancy) remains the definitive SNOOT statement on Academese. Orwell's famous AE translation of the gorgeous 'I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift' in Ecclesiastes as 'Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account' should be tattooed on the left wrist of every grad student in the anglophone world. ~ David Foster Wallace

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit. ~ Jonathan Lethem

han": There was no English equivalent, no translation. It was an overwhelming sorrow and regret, a grief and yearning so deep it pervades your soul - but with a sprinkling of resilience, of hope. ~ Angie Kim

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

Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is 'Daddy.' Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply 'Dear Father. ~ Thomas Allan Smail

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

Josie examined the booklet, candelabra on the cover, a program. Brahms, and then Psalm 16, Psalm 32, Bach. A prayer, the Mourner's Kaddish, in the flamelike Hebrew, followed by an English pronunciation, a translation. At least she would not clap in the wrong part. She remembered that night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michael so handsome in his iridescent thrift-store suit and green silk tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding. ~ Janet Fitch

which was named after the English translation of Nihon Goraku Bussan, "Service Games" - hence SEGA Enterprises. ~ Blake J. Harris

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

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

Les contes de fées c'est comme ça.
Un matin on se réveille.
On dit: "Ce n'était qu'un conte de fées..."
On sourit de soi.
Mais au fond on ne sourit guère.
On sait bien que les contes de fées
c'est la seule vérité de la vie.

Fairy tales are like that.
One morning, we wake up
and say, "It was only a fairy tale..."
We put a smile on our face
but deep inside, this isn't what we feel like doing.
It's because we know full well that fairy tales
are the only truth in life.

[The English translation is Lucrèce Riminiac's.] ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text. ~ Jonathan Galassi

For me, therapy is partly translation therapy, the talking cure a second-language cure. My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: initiation into the language of the subculture within which I happen to live, into a way of explaining myself to myself. But gradually, it becomes a project of translating backward.
The way to jump over my Great Divine is to crawl backward over it in English. It's only when I retell my whole story, back to the beginning, and from the beginning onward, in one language, that I can reconcile the voices within me with each other; it is only then that the person who judges the voices and tells the stories begins to emerge. ~ Eva Hoffman

...it was a funny idea, writing in a language not your own. It almost makes you feel guilty, she said, the way people feel forced to use English, how much of themselves must get left behind in that transition, like people being told to leave their homes and take only a few essential items with them. Yet there was also a purity to that image that attracted her, filled as it was with possibilities for self-reinvention. To be freed from clutter, both mental and verbal, was in some ways an appealing prospect; until you remembered something you needed that you had had to leave behind. She, for instance, found herself unable to make jokes when she spoke in another language...So it was not, she imagined, a question of translation so much as one of adaptation. The personality was forced to adapt to its new linguistic circumstances, to create itself anew... ~ Rachel Cusk

In the city, human beings celebrated and enjoyed material conditions and comforts, but were caught in the labyrinths and knots of spiritual shallowness and psychological confusion. In the city human beings wrestled with the demands of survival and profit but fled from life's imperatives of honesty and moderation. In the city man was afraid to confront his own face. ~ Isa Kamari

In a French accent developed through a lifetime of using English I said, 'Hello sir, I would like to row the English Channel in a bath please.'
What actually arrived in the ear of the French Navy man was, 'Hello sire, I would like to fight a condom across a bath if you please. ~ Tim FitzHigham

Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language. ~ Moses Finley

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.

English Translation.

Oh Khusrau, the river of love
Runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns,
And one who drowns, gets across. ~ Amir Khusrau

When I spoke to her in Spanish I was not translating, I was not thinking my thoughts in English first, but I was nevertheless outside the language I was speaking, building simple sentences with the blocks I'd memorized, not communicating through a fluid medium. ~ Ben Lerner

For him, the kampung was a place to live and work that was based on a steadfast and intimate relationship between man and nature. The village was a true reflection of life in the tropics. ~ Isa Kamari

I'm going to go where my heart takes me, even if it's a messy road. ~ Ha Myung-hee (writer), Said By Dr. Jung YoonDo, Doctors (닥터스)

So why did the King James translation of the Bible use the word 'kill' rather than 'murder'? Because four hundred years ago when the translation was made, 'kill' was synonymous with 'murder.' As a result, some people don't realize that English has changed since 1610 and therefore think that the Ten Commandments prohibit all killing. But, of course, they don't. If the Ten Commandments forbade killing, we would all have to be vegetarians - killing animals would be prohibited. And we would all have to be pacifists - since we could not kill even in self-defense. ~ Dennis Prager

(Claude and Marcel LeFever were speaking in French. This simultaneous English translation is being beamed to the reader via literary satellite.) ~ Tom Robbins

[A translation into English of a poem Elisabeth wrote two weeks after her wedding]

Oh, had I but never left the path
That would have led me to freedom.
Oh, that on the broad avenues
Of vanity I had never strayed!

I have awakened in a dungeon,
With chains on my hands.
And my longing ever stronger-
And freedom! You, turned from me!

I have awakened from a rapture,
Which held my spirit captive,
And vainly do I curse this exchange,
In which I gambled away you -freedom!- away.

The Reluctant Empress, Chapter 2 ~ Brigitte Hamann

Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures, ~ Lawrence Venuti

the book of genesis received its English name from the Greek translation of the Heb word toledot, which is used thirteen times in Genesis and is translated as "story" (2.4), "record" (5.1), or "line" (10.1). In Heb, it is known, like many books in the Tanakh, by its first word, bereshit, which means, "In the beginning. ~ Adele Berlin

... for although people can be made worse off by all other gifts, correct reasoning alone can only be for the good. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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

A massive and brilliant accomplishment
the first English translation of the original Grimm brothers' fairy tales. The plain telling is that much more forceful for its simplicity and directness, particularly in scenes of naked self-concern and brutality. Hate, spite, love, magic, all self-evident, heartbreaking, delightful. I will return to this book over and over, no doubt about it. ~ Donna Jo Napoli

There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth! ~ Daniel Wallace

Many people just think they understand English, remember. ~ Emma Wagner