Translations Quotes

The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me'. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Translation is not appropriation, as is sometimes claimed; it is a form of listening that then changes how you speak. ~ Eliot Weinberger

It is man and not the Bible that needs correcting. Greater and more careful scholarship has shown that apparent contradictions were caused by incorrect translations, rather than divine inconsistencies. ~ Billy Graham

Had I known that coffee could taste so good, I would have gotten drunk on it every day. ~ Rabih Alameddine

We didn't have last names before they came. When they decided they needed to keep track of us, last names were given to us, just like the name "INDIAN" itself was given to us. These were attempted translations and botched Indian names, random surnames, and names passed down from white American generals, admirals, and colonels, and sometimes troop names, which were sometimes just colors. ~ Tommy Orange

We have then, in the first part of The Faerie Queene, four of the seven deadly sins depicted in the more important passages of the four several books; those sins being much more elaborately and powerfully represented than the virtues, which are opposed to them, and which are personified in the titular heroes of the respective books. The alteration which made these personified virtues the centre each of a book was probably part of the reconstruction on the basis of Aristotle Ethics.
The nature of the debt to Aristotle suggests that Spenser did not borrow directly from the Greek, but by way of modern translations. ~ Janet Spens

the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish. ~ Aubrey F.G. Bell

Other people spoke, and I tried to keep up with the translations. All the stories were about Dimitri's kindness and strength of character. Even when not out battling the undead, Dimitri had always been there to help those who needed it. Almost everyone could recall sometime that Dimitri had stepped up to help others, going out of his way to do what was right, even in situations that could put him at risk. That was no surprise to me. Dimitri always did the right thing.
And it was that attitude that had made me love him so much. I had a similar nature. I too rushed in when others needed me, sometimes when I shouldn't have. Others called me crazy for it, but Dimitri had understood. He'd always understood me, and part of what we'd worked on was how to temper that impulsive need to run into danger with reason and calculation. I had a feeling no one else in this world would ever understand me like he did. ~ Richelle Mead

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings. ~ Boris Pasternak

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

We feel prepared to face the reality of restoration. We walk into town for coffee and telephone Piero Rizzatti, the geometra. The translations "draftsman" or "surveyor" don't quite explain what a geometra is, a professional without an equivalent in the United States - a liaison among owner, builders, and town planning officials. Ian has assured us that he is the best in the area, meaning also that he has the best connections and can get the permits quickly. ~ Frances Mayes

Good translations are one of the vital necessities of our time. ~ Lucas Leiva

You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more. ~ Robert Frost

He was a noisy robust little man with a gleam of real talent concealed in the messy obscurity of his verse. But because he did his best to shock people with his monstrous mass of otiose words (he was the inventor of the "submental grunt" as he called it), his main output seems now so nugatory, so false, so old-fashioned (super-modern things have a queer knack of dating much faster than others) that his true value is only remembered by a few scholars who admire the magnificent translations of English poems made by him at the very outset of his literary career, - ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Poetry is what is gained in translation. ~ Joseph Brodsky

They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there. ~ Marcel Proust

When a people has no translations and is unable to promote its culture, it does not exist. ~ Bakhtyar Ali

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. ~ Stasi Eldredge

The Christian "doctrines" are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection ~ C.S. Lewis

I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. ~ Walt Whitman

Your fine church has not contented itself with cutting off from the Scripture entire books, chapters, sentences and words, but what it has not dared to cut off altogether it has corrupted and violated by its translations. In order that the sectaries of this age may altogether pervert this first and most holy rule of our faith, they have not been satisfied with shortening it or with getting rid of so many beautiful parts, but they have turned and turned it about, each one as he chose, and instead of adjusting their ideas by this rule they have adopted it to the square of their own greater or less sufficiency. ~ Francis De Sales

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

Many of them were familiar from childhood with the fables of La Fontaine. Or they had read Voltaire or Racine or Molière in English translations. But that was about the sum of any familiarity they had with French literature. And none, of course, could have known in advance that the 1830s and '40s in Paris were to mark the beginning of the great era of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, and Baudelaire, not to say anything of Delacroix in painting or Chopin and Liszt in music. ~ David McCullough

Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the world. ~ Tom Chatfield

If you are interested in Taoism, I would suggest that you read the Way of Life by Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism. I personally prefer the Witter Brynner translation. ~ Frederick Lenz

The sound of the rain needs no translation. In music one doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition ... Same way in dancing, you don't aim at one particular spot in the room ... The whole point of dancing is the dance. ~ Alan Watts

I often visit Maria Tatar's 'The Grimm Reader' for a cold dose of courage. Her translations come from the Brothers Grimm, whose now-famous collection of 'Kinder- und Hausmarchen' ('Children's and Household Tales') was first published in 1812. The book was not intended for young readers. ~ Kate Bernheimer

Even when she was alive, Esther Kreitman's novels, short stories and translations received far less attention than the work of her famous brothers, I. J. and Isaac Bashevis Singer. ~ Clive Sinclair

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly. ~ Paul Auster

In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf ~ Christopher Paolini

He said he "admired our courage" but didn't want to see us do anything to "damage our promising futures." He felt "proud as an American" that we had "exercised our right to peaceful free expression." But if we did it again, he didn't "know what action the state board of education might take against individual students."
Translation: You've had your fun. Now sit down, shut up, and take the freakin' test. Or else. ~ Jordan Sonnenblick

True to their history, the English are very domineering and have manipulated it in different ways. I wouldn't say that there was an original, but there is a lot of expurgation in some of the Victorian translations, and there's a lot of additional salacious nonsense in some of them, too. I also like the early French one, much-derided for being fanciful but which is actually very elegantly done. It's very big, very capacious. ~ Marina Warner

A minute passes as we enter Little Tokyo. It's kind of similar to what you see in the movies, with a lot of signs in different languages with "engrish" translations underneath and those big red gates with the curved wood on top, whatever they're called. The passing people on the street are, understandably, largely of Asian descent.
... I get a couple looks, but I suspect it's 'cause my hair is a variety of shades not seen outside of an anime. ~ Vaughn R. Demont

Books are merely translations of our emotions into words that allow us to connect on an almost blood transfusion level. ~ Ksenia Anske

Wind does not need translation. It speaks the language of men, of animals and birds, of rocks and trees and earth and sky and water. It does not eat or sleep, or take shelter from the weather. It is the weather.
And it lives. ~ Jessica Day George

All translations are made up" opined Vikram, "Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something ~ G. Willow Wilson

Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil. ~ Anne Michaels

I mainly wanted non-english writing poets, because I loved the idea that I was translating translations. ~ Simone Muench

God delivers over to men his visible will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately make translations of it; translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, and of nonsense. Very few minds comprehend the divine language. The most sagacious, the calmest, the most profound, decipher slowly, and when they arrive with their text, the task has long been completed; there are already twenty translations on the public place. From each remaining springs a party, and from each misinterpretation a faction; and each party thinks that it alone has the true text, and each faction thinks that it possesses the light. ~ Victor Hugo

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 Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book. ~ Dan Brown

There are nine different words in Maya for the color blue...but just three Spanish translations, leaving six butterflies that can be seen only by the Maya, proving beyond doubt that when a language dies, six butterflies disappear from the consciousness of the earth. ~ Earl Shorris

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries. ~ Martin Cruz Smith

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

To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said that autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. 'It is a glory,' she said, 'and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise. ~ John Steinbeck

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth's four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's] because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen. ~ Reginald Horace Blyth

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

It was real Cheyenne. I would get the translations the night before, but it was very difficult because it was not like any other language you would be familiar with. ~ Joe Lando

I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations ... English from Edwardian times. ~ Sandra Cisneros

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

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

Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets. ~ Baltasar Gracian

Air power speaks a strategic language so new that translation into the hackneyed idiom of the past is impossible. ~ Alexander P. De Seversky

The best value translations of the Poetic Edda are by Hollander from Texas Uni Press, or by Larrington of Oxford Uni Press. ~ Sweyn Plowright

When pressed, the Suyá would say that the only ones who still knew what they meant were the beings that taught the songs to the Suyá in the first place. One can go no further, for it is hard for an anthropologist to get translations directly from jaguars, birds, bees, and extinct enemies. ~ Anthony Seeger

Be on guard against any tampering with the Word, whether disguised as a search for truth, or a scholarly attempt at apparently hidden meanings; and beware of the confusion created by the senseless rash of new versions, translations, editions, and improvements upon the tried and tested Bible of our fathers and grandfathers. ~ M. R. DeHaan

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

From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.

He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothin ~ Ambrose Bierce

Scriptural determinism" sounds like an arcane academic paradigm, but it is deployed by nonacademics in a consequential way. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as Americans tried to fathom the forces at work, sales of several kinds of books rose. Some people bought books about Islam, some bought books about the recent history of the Middle East, and some bought translations of the Koran. And of course some bought more than one kind of book. But people who bought only translations of the Koran were showing signs of scriptural determinism. They seemed to think that you could understand the terrorists' motivation simply by reading their ancient scriptures - just search the Koran for passages advocating violence against infidels and, having succeeded, end the analysis, content that you'd found the essential cause of 9/11. ~ Robert Wright

All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original. ~ Henri Bergson

That's the problem with translations," she added sadly. "You can never quite reproduce the flavor of the original. ~ Emily Croy Barker

In art as in life, some things need no translation. ~ Paula Vogel

These are crystalline - oftentimes incandescent - translations of Juarroz's powerful metaphysical poems where eternity and silence jut up against a world where "writing infects the landscape" and there are "more letters than leaves" - The kind of match one hopes for where both the translator and the poet are in luck; new poems which don't leak and yet old poems in which the original passion shines. ~ Jorie Graham

I tend to be kind of literal about translation. I think it's important to present the writer as closely as possible. ~ Ann Goldstein

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

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

Opens up a whole new view of Beckett. The strong mutual attraction between Beckett and Cunard may help explain the leftist political views he expressed both in these superb and long-neglected translations for Negro and elsewhere in his work. ~ Barney Rosset

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

Gaiaguys are free to think for themselves, and since their translations of our texts - even if these are of a preliminary nature - are sought for by many people, we see no reason for withdrawing our permission. ~ Billy Meier

Does it not seem strange that the generation with the most advanced technology and the easiest-to-read Bible translations is the weakest generation of Christians in the history of our country? Church attendance has never been lower, and the Christian influence in our culture never weaker. ~ A.W. Tozer

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents. Translation by Sharon Lebell ~ Epictetus

I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation. ~ Beck

A German or a Russian mamaloschen (mother tongue) pedigree made for two wildly different translations of the same verse by the American Yiddish poet H. Leyvik.

"Dos turemdike lebn in der turemdike shtot", translated "The towering life of the towering city" (Yiddish turem, "tower," of German origin) became in another version "The imprisoned life of the prison city" (via turme, "prison", from Russian).

I discovered this old "plot" in a recent lecture, a volume on American Yiddish Poetry, by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. One of those gentle epiphanies that only apparently obscure footnotes or references could reveal.

In a frivolous gesture, I concocted an improbable rendition based on both translations, a slice of contemporary universal metropolitan spleen:

The imprisoned life of the towering city. ~ Harshav

Nothing is what you imagine. Her mind hovered above this simple and alarming thought. The variables were too great, the particularities too distinct, life a flood of translations from the shadow-edged yearnings of the heart to the immutable aspects of the physical world. ~ Elizabeth Strout

I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation. ~ Robert Frost

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

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation. ~ Robert Morgan

The subtle differences in language and humor that get lost in translation, for example, make it almost impossible for big companies to do something that will appeal at home and abroad. ~ Larry Gelbart

Atomism was viciously persecuted as heresy throughout the early Christian era, and only one printed manuscript of De Rerum Naturum survived the flames. There are several translations; I have chosen the one translated by my fellow Devonian and Oxonian, W. Hannaford Brown. Brown's own manuscript was almost destroyed during the Nazi bombardment of England in 1943: if a religious book had survived so many vicissitudes we can easily imagine what the faithful would say. But Lucretius teaches us to live without such piffle. ~ Christopher Hitchens

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

So what Jesus taught must be understood from the deepest level and that is one of the best sayings to show that he was talking in that way. In the book Revelations from Christ, I found out something that Yogananda said. That Jesus had said son of men and son of God, and people often misunderstand so sometimes the translations themselves are wrong for that reason. So when he said son of man he meant his human body and personality. When he said son of God, he meant the infinite Christ consciousness with which he'd obtained oneness. ~ Goswami Kriyananda

In the evening they went to say good-bye to Bilbo. 'Well, if you must go, you must,' he said. 'I am sorry. I shall miss you. It is nice just to know that you are about the place. But I am getting very sleepy.' Then he gave Frodo his mithril-coat and Sting, forgetting that he had already done so; and he gave him also three books of lore that he had made at various times, written in his spidery hand, and labelled on their red backs: Translations from the Elvish, by B. B. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I've always like Medieval literature. As a young girl I read mythologies and Norse legends, that sort of thing. I loved Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. While I was studying at Middle Tennessee State University for doctoral program I came in contact with more ancient literature. I examined older literature more seriously which intrigued and fascinated me very much; I was drawn to it.
For the book I used all my own translations of Beowulf from my doctorate. Culture is contained in language, if you study a language you'll see bits of culture, because the words are different and you see into the lives of the people. The Anglo-Saxon language touched me very deeply. Some of it is the heroic. Some of it is the melancholy. But there is also honor. You uphold, you fight to the death. Even if you watch movies, like Marvel comic book movies, like Thor: you want the great ones to win. Its even better if they have a fault. But you want the heroic character to win. ~ Deborah A. Higgens

Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind. ~ Siri Hustvedt

'Translations,' Lateran said scornfully, examining the bruises along Kestrel's ribs. 'Like caressing your lover through a burlap sack. You get the gesture of the thing, but not the nuance, and it is overall an irritating experience.' ~ L.S. Baird

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist "sage," his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures ~ Susan Sontag

And after I started working for the Bureau, most of my translation duties included translations of documents and investigations that actually started way before 9/11. ~ Sibel Edmonds

The Bible is a collection of stories and myths based on hearsay transmitted from generation to generation and which were recorded by many (40 +) different authors during a period spanning possibly 1,600 or more years. The 'evidence' then is only to be found in the Bible – no historical, scientific or authenticated archaeological evidence exists. If you check the internet for such evidence you will discover many websites by Christian ministries – all present the evidence only from the Bible. Most so-called archaeological evidence is based on supposition rather than fact. ~ Brian Baker

I began writing poems when I was about eight, with a heavy assist from my mother. She read me Arthur Waley's translations and Whitman and Robinson Jeffers, who have been lifelong influences on me. My father read Keats to me, and then he read more Keats while I was lying on the sofa struggling with asthma. ~ Carolyn Kizer

If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood. ~ Saint Augustine

Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties. ~ Voltaire

Ah, Houellebecq. I've only read him in English translations so I'm sure I'm not getting the full greatness of his work, but golly, he writes better sex scenes than anyone else alive. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original. ~ William Cowper

You have hundreds of artists you're dealing with across the world and the scale of this movie [Kung Fu Panda] was insane - we had a parallel pipeline going on where you had two versions recording Mandarin voice actors, getting it to be funny for Mandarin audiences going beyond a straight translation, and then animating it and lighting it, it's a lot of work. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson

One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time. ~ Tom Stoppard

Increasingly she's finding it harder to tell the 'real' NYC from translations like Zigotisopolis ... as if she keeps getting caught in a vortex taking her farther back in time into the virtual world. Certainly unforeseen in the original business plan, there arises now a possibility that DeepArcher is about to overflow out into the perilous gulf between screen and face. ~ Thomas Pynchon

The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German. ~ Gore Vidal

The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life. ~ Lewis Thomas