“Poetry translation is like playing a piano sonata on a trombone.”
Source: Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
“In Iraq, interpreters were ten times more likely to be killed than were U.S. troops.”
Source: Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
“Such deluded persons, symptomatically, dwell in dualities of dishonor and honor, misery and happiness, woman and man, good and bad, pleasure and pain, etc., thinking, "This is my wife; this is my house; I am the master of this house; I am the husband of this wife." These are the dualities of delusion. Those who are so deluded by dualities are completely foolish and therefore cannot understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead.”
Source: Bhagavad-Gita As It Is
“Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?”
“To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.”
Source: Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
“Of the 193 recognized countries in the world, only politically isolated North Korea is considered monolingual.”
Source: Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
“Dreams and visions are not always intended to be interpreted or analyzed. At times they say exactly what they mean, providing a set of images and meanings to be taken for no more or less than they are.”
Source: Write from the Heart: Unleashing the Power of Your Creativity
“Men and women may speak the same language, but we interpret words differently.”
Source: Insights for Singles: Steps to Find Everlasting Love
“Changing words isn't so hard. Recognizing a particular sound, swapping it for another - that was easy even for your ancestors. Reading what happens in your head and the heads of all the beings around you, now that is difficult. Finding equivalents in one culture for the basic concepts of another - that is really difficult. I say the word vegetable and the translator tells you something like 'edible moss'. So, yes, it's a miracle, but it's a dangerous miracle. It makes you think you understand beasts and you never do. When it comes down to it, you can't even understand your own species.”
Source: The Inferior
“When he is dissected after his death," a disrespectful interpreter said of a foreign dignitary, "a million predicates will be found in his stomach: those he swallowed in the past decades without saying them.”