Literary Translation Quotes

Literary translation is not merely an act of picking words from one language and keeping it by dipping in the vessel of another language. Those words need to be rinsed, washed, carved and decorated as much as possible. ~ Suman Pokhrel

In literary translations, it is this very articulation of expressions that matters the most to bring home to the readers the full essence of the original text in question. ~ Suman Pokhrel

I teach Korean translation at the British Centre for Literary Translation summer school, so I see an emerging generation too, who are around my age. I'm hoping to find time to mentor, and to help emerging translators to a first contract through Tilted Axis. ~ Deborah Smith

Chance of source language influencing the target language and that of the translator intervening onto the style of original writer are major challenges in literary translation. ~ Suman Pokhrel

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

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

I don't know that I've gotten much feedback directly from the literary world; sometimes I doubt even the notion that there is a literary world, though I guess there is or was. ~ Jonathan Ames

I thought you didn't like animals."
"I love animals. Where did you get that idea?" Marmie put her paws on his leg, and he picked her up.
"From my dog?"
"That's a dog? Jeez, I'm sorry. I thought it was an industrial-waste accident." His long, lean fingers slid through the cat's fur.
"Slytherin." She slapped the lid back onto the flour container. What kind of man liked a cat more than he liked an exceptionally fine French poodle?
"What did you call me?"
"It's a literary reference. You wouldn't understand."
"Harry Potter. And I don't appreciate name calling. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution. ~ Elizabeth Wein

To be free means always leaving ... or returning to a place where leaves never fall. ~ Rich Shapero

In elaborating how "philosophy by showing" works, and in defending the idea that literature and music can contribute to philosophical "showing", I am also doing something more standardly philosophical. But I view most of the book as an interweaving of philosophy and literary criticism. If that entails a broadening of a standard idea of philosophy, it's a broadening I'd like to see happen. ~ Philip Kitcher

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor. ~ Henry David Thoreau

...there is something Russian about this particular use of the eye as an aggressive and defensive weapon. In Russian literature there is endless variation in the use of the eye as a soulful receptor, as an avid grasper, and as the very organ for mutual soulful surrender. In regard to the great models of political and literary life, however, the emphasis is on the eye as an incorruptible instrument for the manipulation of the future. Gorky's description of Tolstoy is typical: 'With sharp eyes, from which neither a single pebble nor a single thought could hide itself, he looked, measured, tested, compared.' Or again, his eyes are 'screwed up as though straining to look into the future'.
Equally typical is Trotsky's description of Lenin:
When Lenin, his left eye narrowed, receives a wireless containing a speech he resembles a devilishly clever peasant who does not let himself be confused by any words, or deluded by any phrases. That is highly intensified peasant shrewdness, lifted to the point of inspiration. ~ Erik H. Erikson

Whether early or late, the Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments. ~ Terry Teachout

I often reread passages of "Lolita" for its exquisite language. To me, "Lolita" has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life. ~ Amy Tan

If my opinion runs more than twenty pages," she said, "I am disturbed that I couldn't do it shorter." The mantra in her chambers is "Get it right and keep it tight." She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion's opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. "If you can say it in plain English, you should," RBG says. Going through "innumerable drafts," the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. "I think that law should be a literary profession," RBG says, "and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft. ~ Irin Carmon

The author is impacted by a hidden insistence that takes the shape of different combinations each time a
different text is produced but the underlying problem remains the same for him. ~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Children are particularly literary, for they say what they feel not what someone has taught them to feel. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in? ~ Margaret Atwood

Don't try it," he said. The mutant was reading my mind. "You, boy, you're a literary trainspotter ... ~ Will Self

Evil should not be, Detective Vera. Truly never can be. But in defining it as such, an inherent human bond with negativity confirms its very existence. Its mere acknowledgement cancels its credibility. Evil is nothing - the lack of anything of substance - made concrete as a balance to everything else. Evil is not, yet it is a part of
each human, because humans welcome its participation in their lives. They speak of it in anger or disgust, fear or even wonder - the most appropriate response - giving it a stronger foundation with every passing thought it distorts. Though within their pliable minds, they welcome it with the glee of the ignorant, nurturing the unthinkable, thinking the unimaginable, imagining the most horrid, abysmal designs, embellishing them with an insidious veracity until evil is as substantial a reality as their next breath. I strive for something else, beyond evil's claustrophobic clutches. I strive to transcend evil by becoming pure nothing. I strive as my followers strived." He paused, his ideology a cancer, spreading… "I am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?" His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. ... ~ John Claude Smith

With literary biographies, you're either shelved with other biographies or next to your subject's fiction. ~ Blake Bailey

I awoke from this nightmare into a freezing cold motel room: the heater had broken at some point during the night, and the fan was now blowing icy air into the room.

At first I tried to keep warm under the crappy motel bedspread by thinking about the man I loved. At the time he was traveling in Europe, and was thus unreachable. I didn't know it yet, but as I lay there, he was traveling with another woman. Does it matter now? I tried hard to feel his body wrapped tightly around mine.

Next I tried to imagine everyone I had ever loved, and everyone who had ever loved me, wrapped around me. I tried to feel that I was the composite of all these people, instead of alone in a shitty motel room with a broken heater somewhere outside of Detroit, a few miles from where Jane's body was dumped thirty-six years ago on a March night just like this one.

'Need each other as much as you can bear,' writes Eileen Myles. 'Everywhere you go in the world.'

I felt the wild need for any or all of these people that night. Lying there alone, I began to feel - perhaps even to know - that I did not exist apart from their love and need of me.

Of this latter I felt less sure, but it seemed possible, if the equation worked both ways.

Falling asleep I thought, 'Maybe this, for me, is the hand of God. ~ Maggie Nelson

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp
brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure. ~ Anne Carson

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings. ~ Flann O'Brien

I'm not club-able, you see. I don't like literary parties and literary gatherings and literary identities. I'd hate to join anything, however loosely. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back
that's an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. ~ Arthur Miller

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man. ~ Samuel Johnson

Those who lead a literary life seem old when they're young and young when they're old, but they're never actually either. Like a good book, they are bound by neither category nor time. ~ J.C. Hallman

Those of my critics who declare I have no feeling for form will be filled with delight over the meandering formlessness of these notes. ~ Sherwood Anderson

Not to admire, is all the art I know To make men happy, or to keep them so. Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago; And thus Pope quotes the precept to re-teach From his translation; but had none admired, Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired? ~ Lord Byron

One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them. ~ Sarah Moore Grimke

Question: You're 21-years-old, a young adult writing mature adult literary fiction. Imaj: Yes, I feel creativity is an ageless thing. ~ Imaj

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation ... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience. ~ Robert Morgan

I've summarized dozens of books in my literary career; it's become rather second nature. ~ Rick Perlstein

In Washington, the translation of E Pluribus Unum has been lost. The belief that we are one nation - united in purpose - caring about and for one another is no longer the practice. ~ Madeleine M. Kunin

A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists ... that thier success is based on literary merit
that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity. ~ Stephen King

It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female's nose must never shine. In war, in famine, in fire, it had to be matte, and no one got a lipstick without the requisite face powder. … I was taunted by the problem: how could someone write something like the 'Symposium' and make sure her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn't matter to me that I was reading a translation. I'd read Plato's brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself away. Even as a reader my nose shined. It was clearly either/or. You had to concentrate on either one or the other. In a New York minute, the oil from Saudi Arabia could infiltrate your house and end up on your nose. It didn't hurt, it didn't make noise, it didn't incapacitate in any way except for the fact that no girl worth her salt took enough time away from vigilance to read a book let alone write one. ~ Andrea Dworkin

The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For ...
things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Danilo's was the kind of place where many drinking men come to hide, be it from their wives, in-laws, their jobs or life in general. it was where men and women can come to drink poison as if it was the only form of medicine available to remedy the migraine headache called life. The lighting dim and secluded, mostly covering the tables, counters and the door to the bathroom. The walls were decorated in decades of memories, favorite sports teams and other miscellaneous decor that was typical of small bars such as this one. It was too dark to tell what they were from a distance.
There was a thick layer of smoke hovering in the air around the ceiling lights, the place was smothered in it but was strongest above everyone's heads. The smell was the classic stale bar odor of cigarettes and cheap cigars. ~ J.C. Joranco

Shit, man, if you see a dog scratching at the dirt trying to dig something up, walk away real fast, he said, then pulled a little square of paper from his pocket and swallowed whatever was folded inside. ~ Cole Alpaugh

A castaway adrift on my own little island - rich and with my family along with thousands of beautiful, drunken tourists to keep me company." - excerpt from Confessions of an Internet Pornographer. ~ Luis Mario