Translations Quotes - Page 13

• On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.

  Albert Einstein

  Grease, Brain, Use

  Quoted by Otto Stern in an interview with Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962.

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• Total experiences, of which there are many kinds, tend again and again to be apprehended only as revivals or translations of the religious imagination. To try to make a fresh way of talking at the most serious, ardent, and enthusiastic level, heading off the religious encapsulation, is one of the primary intellectual tasks of future thought.

  Susan Sontag

  Religious, Talking, Imagination

  "Styles of Radical Will" by Susan Sontag, (p. 69), 1966.

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• How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

  Salman Rushdie

  Betrayal, Fall, Angel

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception.  All you can do is play melody.  No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Play, Voice

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• In art as in life, some things need no translation.

  Paula Vogel

  Art, Needs

  Paula Vogel (1992). “The Baltimore Waltz”, p.24, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• Mathematics to me is like a language I don’t speak though I admire its literature in translation.

  David Quammen

  Literature, Language, Speak

  "Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic". Book by David Quammen, 2012.

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• There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation.

  John Dryden

  Giving, Grace, Diction

  John Dryden (1866). “Poetical Works: With a Memoir”, p.129

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• A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.

  Jonathan Swift

  Running, Book, Greek

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• The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.

  August Wilson

  Artist, Play, Giving

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• 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

  Sound, Tasks, Venture

  William Cowper (1851). “The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence”, p.379

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• Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.

  Italo Calvino

  Country, Important, World

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• Hubble touches people. When you're looking that far out, you're giving people their place in the universe, it touches people. Science is often visual, so it doesn't need translation. It's like poetry, it touches you.

  Story Musgrave

  Science, People, Giving

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

  Steven Pinker

  Baby, Age, Tourists

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• The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

  Ned Rorem

  Art, Lying, Knowing

  Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.63, Open Road Media

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• 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.

  Bill Vaughan

  Two, Done, Way

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• Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

  Thomas Paine

  Mean, Information, Language

  Thomas Paine (2016). “The Writings of Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason”, p.86, Thomas Paine

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

  Lewis Thomas

  Rest Of Life, Language, Mark

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation.

  David Nicholls

  Reading, Cutting, Numbers

  "David Nicholls: Adapting Great Expectations for the screen" by David Nicholls, www.theguardian.com. November 16, 2012.

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• A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

  Gregory Rabassa

  Reading, Language, Unchanging

  Gregory Rabassa (2006). “If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents”, p.89, New Directions Publishing

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• Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

  Michael Cunningham

  Book, Writing, Secret

  "Found in Translation". www.nytimes.com. October 2, 2010.

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• I have nothing but wastes and wilds of self-translation before me for many miserable months to come.

  Samuel Beckett

  Self, Literature, Waste

  Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider, Maurice Harmon (1998). “No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider”, p.14, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Greed, Age, Crafts

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• Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.

  Robert Hass

  Twenties, Vivid, Firsts

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• If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Spiritual, Men, Cities

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

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• The goal of Bible translation is: be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

  Leland Ryken

  Biblical, Goal, Transparent

  "Leland Ryken Interview Differences in Bible Translations". Christian Publishing House Interview, christianpublishinghouse.co. October 10, 2016.

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