Best originals & translations Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“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.”

Ifs Way Important Feelings Emotion Originals Important Things Details Translations Captured Publication

Author:Karl Ove Knausgard

“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.”

Humans Sound Impossible Poet Equal Tasks Originals Ancient Venture Rhyme Translations Closing Ingenuity Couplets

Book:The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence

Source: The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence

“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.”

Ifs Doe Light Language Pure Originals Shining Mediums Obscure Translations Transparent

Author:Walter Benjamin

“In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.”

May Effort Originals Be Good Adequate Translations Reproduction Approximation

Book:The Life of Goethe

Source: The Life of Goethe

“These are crystalline - oftentimes incandescent - translations of Juarroz's powerful metaphysical poems where eternity and silence jut up against a world where “writing infects the landscape” and there are “more letters than leaves” - The kind of match one hopes for where both the translator and the poet are in luck; new poems which don't leak and yet old poems in which the original passion shines.”

World Writing Kind Passion Powerful Silence Poet Letters Eternity Originals Luck Shining Landscape Metaphysical Translations Leaks Translators

Author:Jorie Graham

“There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth!”

Mean Courses Lost Expression Originals Dresses Italian Biblical Translations Similarity Traitor Spelling Translators Pronunciation Italian Proverb Pithy

Author:Daniel Wallace

“Men talk of "the mistakes of Scripture." I thank God that I have never met with any. Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men. But mistakes of the original word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest.”

Men May Speak Mistake Mets Originals Scripture Spokes Thank God Delightful Translations Infallible Translators

Author:Charles Spurgeon

“True to their history, the English are very domineering and have manipulated it in different ways. I wouldn't say that there was an original, but there is a lot of expurgation in some of the Victorian translations, and there's a lot of additional salacious nonsense in some of them, too. I also like the early French one, much-derided for being fanciful but which is actually very elegantly done. It's very big, very capacious.”

Way Different Done Bigs Originals Different Ways Nonsense Translations Victorian

Author:Marina Warner

“So the aim for the press was a mixture of things: to publish under-represented writing, which is an intersection of original language, style, content, and often its author's gender. To publish it properly, in a way that makes it clear that this is art, not anthropology. To spotlight the importance of translation in making cultures less dully homogenous.”

Way Writing Art Culture Language Clear Style Importance Originals Aim Presses Gender Publish Mixtures Translations Anthropology Spotlight Intersections

Author:Deborah Smith

“I think of translations as passing some scholarly smell test: you can read the words of the translation and be reasonably sure of what the words are in the original.”

Thinking Tests Originals Smell Passing Passings Translations Scholarly

Author:Christian Wiman

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

Thinking Doe Real Speak Language Produce Originals Translations

Author:Christian Wiman

“The Bible affects everybody's life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia. The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.”

Christian Class Middle Europe Originals Greek Middle Class Affected Asia Translations Peasants Hebrew

Author:Ngugi wa Thiong'o

“I want my voice to be consistent no matter if it's an original or a translation.”

Ifs Want Matter Voice Originals Consistent Translations

Author:Karin Tidbeck

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”

Originals Originality Translate Translations Unfaithful

Author:Jorge Luis Borges

“Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.”

Ifs Knows I Can Wish My Own Doubt Produce Fine Fit Originals Historical Details Greek Gentleman Shock Latin Sensibility Precise Translations Love Poems Cameron Distasteful Historical Truth

Author:Mercedes Lackey

“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.”

Language Quality Equal Approach Originals Judged Translations Accuracy

Author:Gregory Rabassa

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