Translations Quotes - Page 3

• I don't think that someone who does not speak the original language can ever expect to produce a real translation.

  Christian Wiman

  Real, Thinking, Doe

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong.

  Karl Ove Knausgard

  Feelings, Important, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

  Walter Benjamin

  Light, Shining, Doe

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• The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Thousand, Paraphrase, Prettiest

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977”, p.179, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Like translation itself, Asymptote is a fluid web reaching out to all sides, bringing texts and readers together, through the most improbable and marvelous of connections.

  Jonathan Littell

  Together, Connections, Sides

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• For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.

  Utada Hikaru

  Japan, Cds, Lost

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The language of translation ought never to attract attention to itself.

  John Hookham Frere

  Attention, Language, Ought

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

  Eliot Weinberger

  Listening, Sometimes, Speak

  Eliot Weinberger (2000). “Anonymous Sources: A Talk on Translators and Translation : Lecture”

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• Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context - which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Mean, Reflection

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• I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.

  Jung Chang

  Book, Chinese, Taiwan

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• Aimer, ce n'est point nous regarder l'un l'autre,
  mais regarder ensemble dans la meme direction.
  English Translation:
  To love is not to look at each other,
  But to look together in the same direction.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Love Is, Together, Looks

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• Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Language, Complicated

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1984). “Notebooks, 1914-1916”, p.5, University of Chicago Press

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• A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Quality, Language, Equal

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• All language is but a poor translation.

  Franz Kafka

  Ironic, Novelists, Language

  "Franz Kafka And James Baldwin: Blackstar 10/1/16" by Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. January 16, 2016.

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• Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Past

  "Teachers of Wisdom". Book by Igor Kononenko, p. 134, 2010.

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• I want my words to survive translation.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Want

  "For me, England is a mythical place". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2005.

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• The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested.

  Utada Hikaru

  People, Different, Looks

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• This word "description" may be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another, he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may, according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible in his own language.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Two, Choices, Wish

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

  Marcel Proust

  Book, Reading, Successful

  Marcel Proust (1966). “Letters of Marcel Proust”

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• Translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the special purpose of demonstrating the learner's knowledge of the foreign language, either as a form of control or to exercise his intelligence in order to develop his competence.

  Peter Newmark

  Exercise, Order, Two

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• 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

  Photography, Leaving, Doe

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• Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.

  Peter Adamson

  Philosophical, Errors, Islam

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• Good translations are one of the vital necessities of our time.

  Lucas Leiva

  Language, Our Time

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• Its subtlest, most appealing accomplishment may be in how other characters respond to Gregorius' precipitous swerve onto the spiritual path. (...) That said, Night Train to Lisbon is a very long, ambitious book that's feverishly overwritten. (...) Think of W.G. Sebald recast for the mass market: stripped of nuance, cooked at high temperature and pounded home, clause after clause. Some of the clumsiness derives from Barbara Harshav's inelegant translation -- we're often aware of her struggle -- but she can't be blamed for the pervasive bloat.

  Michelle Huneven

  Spiritual, Struggle, Book

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• Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter. One word absent from a sentence can drastically change the true intended meaning of the entire sentence. For instance, if the word love is intentionally or accidentally replaced with hate in a sentence, its effect could trigger a war or false dogma.

  Suzy Kassem

  Hate, War, Love Is

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