Best 114 quotes in «translation quotes» category

(...) a língua é, para o espírito de uma nação, o que o estilo é para o espírito de um indivíduo. Mas o domínio perfeito de uma língua só ocorre quando uma pessoa é capaz de traduzir não os livros, por exemplo, mas a si própria; desse modo, sem sofrer nenhuma perda de sua individualidade, ela consegue se comunicar imediatamente na outra língua, agradando tanto aos estrangeiros quanto aos falantes nativos.

Al igual que todos nosotros, Klima también consideraba real únicamente aquello que llega a nuestra vida desde dentro, gradual, orgánicamente, mientras que a lo que llega desde fuera, inesperada y casualmente, lo veía como si fuera una invasión de lo irreal. Por desgracia no hay nada más real que esta irrealidad.

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.

As long as human beings speak different languages, the need for translation will continue.

Animosity does not eradicate animosity. Only by loving kindness is animosity dissolved. This law is ancient and eternal. (attributed to Buddha)

A translation is no translation,’ he said, ‘unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

A translator is a reader, an interpreter and a creator all in one.

A translator, caught in the space between two tongues. Such people tend to come a little bit unglued from the task of trying to convey meaning from one code to the other. The transfer is never safe, the meaning changes in the channel — becomes tinted, adulterated, absurd, stronger.

At this moment, in this place, the shifting action potential in my neurons cascade into certain arrangements, patterns, thoughts; they flow down my spine, branch into my arms, my fingers, until muscles twitch and thought is translated into motion; mechanical levers are pressed; electrons are rearranged; marks are made on paper. At another time, in another place, light strikes the marks, reflects into a pair of high-precision optical instruments sculpted by nature after billions of years of random mutations; upside-down images are formed against two screens made up of millions of light-sensitive cells, which translate light into electrical pulses that go up the optic nerves, cross the chiasm, down the optic tracts, and into the visual cortex, where the pulses are reassembled into letters, punctuation marks, words, sentences, vehicles, tenors, thoughts. The entire system seems fragile, preposterous, science fictional.

Be as vigilantly on guard against translating such a sentence into the passive voice as you would against committing murder.

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.

Descubrir el poder del azar es descubrir que somos terriblemente frágiles y vulnerables, que dependemos de la casualidad, que una coincidencia estúpida puede destrozarnos en un segundo. Que una palabra estúpida oída por casualidad también puede fulminarnos. Recordar que las personas son terriblemente frágiles es una obligación moral: Paul Auster dice que es cazador de coincidencias por obligación moral.

Du skal bare huske at det ikke er en perfekt krig i en perfekt verden.

An ideal translation should, I believe, reproduce the effect of the original, but I have found that the best any translator can even hope for is to reproduce the effect that the originals have had on him. (Preface, vi)

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

But Spanish and English aren't different languages, only extreme dialects of Latin. It's almost possible to translate word for word. Translation from a language unrelated to English is nothing to do with equivalent words. Whenever I'd tried to do that in Chinese I'd come out with unbroken nonsense. I had to forget the English, hang the meaning up in a well-lit gallery, stare at it hard, then describe it afresh.

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.

Death is only a translation of life into another language.

Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day, and she would listen to every sound, spring to her feet, feel surprised that it had not come; then at sunset, always more sorrowful, she would wish the next day were already there.

Det var det der holdt mig vågen om natten," sagde Walter. "Den her opsplitning af landet. For det er det samme problem overalt. Det er ligesådan med internettet eller kabel-tv - der er aldrig noget centrum, der er ingen fælles enighed, der er bare en billion forskellige distraherende støjkilder. Vi kan aldrig sætte os og føre en vedvarende samtale, det er bare billigt skrammel og en lorteudvikling, det hele. Alt det ægte, alt det autentiske, alt det ærlige dør ud. Intellektuelt og kulturelt bliver vi kastet omkring som tilfældige billiardkugler og reagerer på den seneste tilfældige stimulans.

¡Dios bendiga los tiempos antiguos, en que existían cosas raras...!

Don't fret my dear. If art is translation of the ephemeral into observable form, then always remember that it is the translationn that is the craft. The craft is that which can always be improved. But the ephemeral is that which only you have been able to observe, and that which only you have chosen to translate, and so in a way, the ephemeral is you, and it is already beautiful.

Dreams, always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate is the soul, the more its dreams bear it away from possibility. Each man carries in himself his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed. From birth to death, how many hours can we count that are filled by positive enjoyment, by successful and decisive action? Shall we ever live, shall we ever pass into this picture which my soul has painted, this picture which resembles you? These treasures, this furniture, this luxury, this order, these perfumes, these miraculous flowers, they are you. Still you, these mighty rivers and these calm canals! These enormous ships that ride upon them, freighted with wealth, whence rise the monotonous songs of their handling: these are my thoughts that sleep or that roll upon your breast. You lead them softly towards that sea which is the Infinite; ever reflecting the depths of heaven in the limpidity of your fair soul; and when, tired by the ocean's swell and gorged with the treasures of the East, they return to their port of departure, these are still my thoughts enriched which return from the Infinite - towards you.

Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense.

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.

Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable.

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.

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.

Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.

God values the mother tongue, even for people who may know other languages.

Hij was een mens, en hij was vlees en botten en geest en ziel. Zij had van hem gehouden. De Ritselaer had hem gekocht, dokter Tulp had hem gevorderd voor de wetenschap en ik had hem willen hebben voor de kunst. Allemaal wilden we zijn vlees. Allemaal wilden we iets met het lichaam van deze man. Maar hij behoorde toe aan geen van ons. Hij was alleen maar Aris, de dief.

His wife had also studied art in her hometown, and she could paint, but depending on such work for her livelihood was just not possible. As far as appearances went, she was definitely a real beauty. When she was young, she looked a little like Gong Li, but now that she was middle-aged, she had put on weight and gradually taken on more of a bell-shaped look, resembling Li Siqin. But no matter what, a wife always looks better than her balding, broadbellied husband.

Hvis I ville tillade os at sige den reene Sandhed, da ansee I os heller som eders egne end som eders Religions Fiender; thi hvis I elskede eders Religion, efterlevede I dens Lærdom. Til Slutning maa vi erindre dette, at, hvis Efterkommere holde for at Europa udi vor Tid har været polered, da vil man citere eder for at vise, at vi have levet i Barbariske Tider, og den Idée som man giør sig af eders Opførsel, vil sværte den Alder, som vi leveudi.

I am writing this on a computer that I can’t imagine living without. This is an alarming thought, the extent to which I have organised my life around a metal box full of wires (and, via the Internet, to many other metal boxes full of wires). Someone told me most of the Internet is stored in a warehouse somewhere in North Carolina. I don’t know enough about technology to gauge if this is true, but it made me realise how little I actually understand about the world I inhabit. The world of Dr Wong’s childhood was significantly smaller than mine, but he understood every square inch of it.

I believe the essence of translation lies in taking what is unsaid in a work from one language to another. Words have memories, a history of their own. There are no two words with exactly the same meaning. To recreate the unspoken in another language, one needs to understand what went into making the original; then one must dismantle it and rebuild it in the other language.

If you numb pain you might ignore one of our greatest teachers. As a result, another message can be lost in translation.

In days long past, Jarod said he’d write a sentence about my love, translated in Russian, and that sentence, like my love, is clearly not for sale, unlike his virginity, or this book, which I’m both offering at ten times the market value, so hurry up and buy now, before it goes down.

Inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content.

In Iraq, interpreters were ten times more likely to be killed than were U.S. troops.

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.

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.

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.

Many people just think they understand English, remember.

Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more terribly quiet than Man his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea in marble winter up the stiff blue waves and every Tuesday down he grinds the unastonishable earth with horse and shatter shatters too the cheeks of birds and traps them in his forest headlights salty silvers roll into his net, he weaves it just for that, this terribly quiet customer he dooms animals and mountains technically by yoke he makes the bull bend, the horse to its knees...

One word absent from a sentence, or misinterpreted incorrectly, can change the entire meaning of a sentence. One word can change the meaning of everything. Before you believe anything about God or anybody, ask yourself how well do you trust the transmitter, translator or interpreter. And if you have never met them, then how do you know if the knowledge you acquired is even right? One hundred and twenty-five years following every major event in history, all remaining witnesses will have died. How well do you trust the man who has stored his version of a story? And how can you put that much faith into someone you don't know?

Poetry translation is like playing a piano sonata on a trombone.

Quando se fica velha a memória não é muito boa. - Ela suspirou. - Não é tão ruim esquecer coisas pequenas, é quando não se sabe o que entristece mais, se o outono, porque faz a gente se lembrar de si mesma, ou a primavera, porque se aproveita menos dela do que antes. A coisa mais triste na velhice é talvez não ser mais capaz de tolices. Tradução de Clarice Lispector

Raphael looked like he might have laughed if he'd been younger and more cheerful. 'Why are you using the Jesuit dictionary?' 'How do you know what I'm using? A d it's the only Quechua dictionary.' 'It's probably shrine,'I said, and then when Clem frowned, not understanding, 'not idol.' Raphael nodded to me and I smiled, because he was taking it so gently. I would have burst out laughing if someone had translated Christchurch as Heathen God Temple in front of me.

Since language produces meaning within an enclosed system, there is always a built-in untranslatability, which national languages began to deliberately pursue. The process added to the creation of an untranslatable "reality" that can be expresses only in a particular language. It also added to the discovery of untranslatable "truths.

So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.