Translations Quotes - Page 15

• Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.

  Harper Lee

  Father, Understanding, Diction

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• I would recognise myself in each of his translations and he would feel betrayed and annoyed whenever I didn't write something the way he would have. A part of me died with him, a part of him lives with me.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Writing, Annoyed, Betrayed

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• So I hear we get to go to town this weekend. Want to catch a movie or something? --Z P.S. That is, if Jimmy doesn't mind. Translation: This weekend might be a good chance for us to see each other outside our school in a social environment, free of competetiton. I do not view other boys as threats, and I enjoy making them seem insignificant by calling them the wrong names. (Translation by Macey McHenry)

  Ally Carter

  School, Weekend, Boys

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• I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

  Sylvia Plath

  Jobs, Writing, Expression

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.81, Anchor

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• It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand.

  Fredrik Bajer

  Italian, Doubt, Vices

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• Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications.

  Anne Michaels

  Philosophy, Moving, Sacrifice

  Anne Michaels (2010). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.109, Emblem Editions

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• The Haitians, who knew something about suffering and survival, had a beautiful phrase... The Translation is not perfect, but the nut of it was: 'The season of pain is never over until the sky begins to cry.

  Rick Bragg

  Beautiful, Pain, Nuts

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• Christopher Lynch has made the best and the first careful translation of Machiavelli's Art of War. With useful notes, an excellent introduction, an interpretive essay, glossary, and index, it is a treasure for readers of military history and Renaissance thought as well as for lovers of Machiavelli.

  Harvey Mansfield

  Art, Military, War

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• Polly Findlay showed real insight and imagination in her production of my translation of Seneca's Thyestes at the Arcola. I enjoyed her use of the space and the detail of her work with the actors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with Light Shining.

  Caryl Churchill

  Real, Light, Space

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• Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.

  Gunter Grass

  Things Change, Translators

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• Every act of communication is an act of translation.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Communication

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• 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

  Way, Investigation, Duty

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• I'd love to become like Bill Murray, who was so funny on 'Saturday Night Live' and has gone on to do some of the landmark comedies people like. And then to add this whole other phase to his career with 'Lost in Translation' and 'Rushmore.' I always felt to be able to have something similar to that would be great.

  Will Ferrell

  Night, Careers, People

  "A chat with Will Ferrell". Interview with Stephanie Snipes, www.cnn.com. November 7, 2003.

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• Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.

  Paul Valery

  Betrayal, Kind, Fidelity

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• For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?

  Cyril Connolly

  Freedom, Liberty, Action

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• Film has lost something in the translation to high tech. It's become so super-real. It's with digital this and stereo that, and everything's like a CD.

  Nicolas Cage

  Real, Cds, Digital

  "Cage relishes operatic role in tragic `Leaving Las Vegas'". Interview with Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. November 5, 1995.

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• The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!

  Faiz Ahmad Faiz

  Firsts, Language, Bloody

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• I don't know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people's websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Country, People, Different

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• 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

  Chinese, Mathematics, Interest

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• Pictures rule, but words define, explain, express, direct, and hold together our thoughts and what we know.

  Don Watson

  Together, Language, Our Thoughts

  Don Watson (2003). “Death sentence: the decay of public language”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• 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

  Book, Fall, Men

  Dan Brown (2003). “The Da Vinci Code: A Novel”

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• How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe," in literal translation, "God gives but doesn't share." This meant... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.

  Tracy Kidder

  Men, Giving, Needs

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• 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

  Mistake, Book, Thinking

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• Nothing endures except change; nothing is constant except death. Every heartbeat wounds us, and life would be an eternal bleeding to death, were it not for literature. It grants us what nature does not: a golden time that doesn't rust, a springtime that never wilts, cloudless happiness and eternal youth. [my translation]

  Ludwig Borne

  Doe, Would Be, Rust

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• The light was leaving in the west it was blue The children's laughter sang and skipping just like the stones they threw the voices echoed across the way its getting late It was just another night with the sun set and the moon rise not so far behind to give us just enough light to lay down underneath the stars listen to papas translations of the stories across the sky we drew our own constellations

  Jack Johnson

  Stars, Laughter, Children

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