Pleut Translation Quotes

Rational intelligence is dangerous and leads to ratiocination. The painter is a medium who doesn't realize what he is doing. No translation can express the mystery of sensibility, a word, still unreliable, which is nevertheless the basis of painting or poetry, like a kind of alchemy. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Huiann swallowed, her hands clasped together and her eyes glassy with tears, then she spoke some more.
"Her heart is full of feeling for you, but she knows it is wrong for her to stay with you. She wishes for you to find a white woman who will fit into your life and be the wife you need."
Alan started shaking his head before Dong Li even finished translating. "No. Tell her she makes me happy. She is exactly the wife I need." He breathed deeply, steadying the quaver in his voice. "Ask Chua Huiann if she will do me the honor of marrying me."
Dong clicked his tongue, but offered Alan's proposal.
Huiann's eyes opened wide and she spoke rapidly.
"How would your family and your people react to you marrying a foreign bride? You would be ostracized. It cannot be." Dong added his own thoughts to the translation. "The girl speaks sense and sees more clearly than you."
Alan frowned. He couldn't promise his family would accept Huiann or ever welcome them home as a couple, but he didn't care. Maybe she was seeing reason, but he was only seeing her. ~ Bonnie Dee

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

She had understood all that he had said, with no way of knowing what he meant. It was as though he himself existed here in this town in this state in translation, ambiguous, slightly wrong, too highly colored or wrongly nuanced. Within him was the original, which no one could read. ~ John Crowley

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

Just as typography is human speech translated into what can be read, so photography is the translation of reality into a readable image. ~ Herbert Bayer

A real translation is transparent. ~ Walter Benjamin

including one gentleman who had been introduced as a poet, although Laurence could not believe this had been an accurate translation: more likely the man was a clerk of some sort. ~ Naomi Novik

Just one question, you arrogant fucking cocksucker" said Locke. "I'll grant the Lamora part is easy to spot; the truth is, I didn't know about the apt translation when I took the name. I borrowed it from this old sausage dealer who was kind to me once, back in Catchfire before the plague. I just liked the way it sounded.
"But what the fuck" he said slowly, "ever gave you the idea that Locke was the first name I was actually born with? ~ Scott Lynch

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

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. ~ Havelock Ellis

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

What's that map?" I asked.
"Spells of Coming Forth by Day," he said. "Don't worry. It's a good copy."
I looked at Carter for a translation.
"Most people call it The Book of the Dead," he told me. "Rich Egyptians were always buried with a copy, so they could have directions through the Duat to the Land of the Dead. It's like an Idiot's Guide to the Afterlife."
The captain hummed indignantly. "I am no idiot, Lord Kane."
"No, no, I just meant ... " Carter's voice faltered. "Uh, what is that? ~ Rick Riordan

There is an old Latin quotation in regard to the poet which says 'Poeta nascitur non fit' the translation of which is - the poet is born, not made. ~ Joseph Devlin

Boys," Lindsay agreed, nodding. "What doesn't get lost in translation?"
"Things with the letter X in front of them," Rachel posited. "Like X-Box. And X-rated movies. ~ Nenia Campbell

Overly literal translations, far from being faithful, actually distort meaning by obscuring sense. ~ Ken Liu

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

The language of translation ought never to attract attention to itself. ~ John Hookham Frere

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

Unfortunately, unless the job description included a translation of the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, I was dreadfully under-qualified. ~ Rachel Vincent

But then it came time for me to make my journey - into America. [ ... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right. ~ Don DeLillo

.'All is suffering' is a bad modernist translation. What the Buddha really said is: It's all a mixed bag. Shit is complicated. Everything's fucked up. Everything's gorgeous. ~ Robin Coste Lewis

The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It ~ John Steinbeck

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

When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann's feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy. Two giant words ... I'm sorry. ~ Markus Zusak

...literary translators are the interpreters of human values - and the true peacemakers. ~ Margaret Obank

Photography speaks a universal language that does not need translation, and with an immediacy that the written word lacks. It freezes a moment in time, leaving an indelible image. ~ Bianca Jagger

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

The US and the European Union needs to help in the translation of the demand for democracy into a political will. ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan

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

Similarly, Haynes (1998, viii) notes that many professional translators, and their organizations, remain remarkably uninformed with regards to the progress made in translation technology. He goes on to observe that many are so largely unenthusiastic about it - with attitudes lying somewhere between skeptical and scathing - their very ignorance seeming to contribute to their fear that their jobs will be threatened by this technology. ~ Lynne Bowker

Mr. Wilson affirms that "the only characteristic Nabokov trait" in my translation (aside from an innate "sado-masochistic" urge "to torture both the reader and himself," as Mr. Wilson puts it in a clumsy attempt to stick a particularly thick and rusty pin into my effigy) is my "addiction to rare and unfamiliar words." It does not occur to him that I may have rare and unfamiliar things to convey; that is his loss. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there's no way you're gonna find out what it means. ~ Frank Zappa