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Translations Quotes

“There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish. He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole ‘fishers of men’ analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable?”

BibleTranslationsFishNetsFishers Of MenFishing Nets
Book:The Book of Strange New Things
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“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.”

InterpretationTranslationsInterpretingLost In Translation
Book:The Inferior
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“Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience. . . . Moving. . . . compassionate.”

BookMovingSufferingReadingNamesResultsAdviceBrotherDrugLettersAccountsPreparedDepthIllnessIntimatePensCompassionateSugarWiserBe PreparedEssaysTranslationsWebsiteColumnsAbusiveLovelessReplyingLoveless Marriage
Author:Leigh Newman
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“The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.”

IfsShouldMindFeelingsRealityNamesStarsSkyColdFameEternalSilentDelicateContemplatingSolitarySublimeAbyssAbstractionTranslationsPosterityFirmamentTwinkling
Author:William Hazlitt
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“If men were able to be convinced that art is a precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artist? Or would they begin a careful translation of new art forms into social navigation charts? I am curious to know what would happem if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties.”

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Book:Understanding media: the extensions of man
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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.”

WayTryingKindImaginationReligiousLevelsTalkingSeriousIntellectualTasksPrimariesAgain And AgainTranslationsEnthusiasticRevivalHeadingsArdentWay Of Talking
Author:Susan Sontag
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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?”

MenWorldDoeMadeFallBornDealsSecretDangerousBirthAngelWingsExtremesBetrayalCompromiseCrewTranslationsFusionNewnessGuillotine
Book:The Satanic Verses
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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.”

HumansSoundImpossiblePoetEqualTasksOriginalsAncientVentureRhymeTranslationsClosingIngenuityCouplets
Book:The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence
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“When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.”

WantKindCountryLawMotherDiesLanguageImaginationNaturalLibertyAcceptingLike YouTasteEqualMarkTemplesRejectsGoddessEnteringStatuesTranslationsOwlForeign CountriesStewStatue Of LibertyNatural DeathHash
Author:Randall Jarrell
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“No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life.”

KnowsMenWellsReasonAbleLanguageLordWiseEffectsPerspectiveMathematicsSaintPhilosopherLatterLengthPortionsTranslationsZealBishopsAntiquityLength Of Life
Author:Roger Bacon
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“How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.”

IdeasHandsEyeRememberSpeakLanguageForceLosesSimpleRoomsDoorsInstrumentsSurpriseFingersLipsShouldersOpeningPerceivePhrasesTranslationsEyebrowsWhisperingExpressiveHindranceSimple Ideas
Book:Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic
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“In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?”

MindMeanArtEyeLanguageBlackWhiteExpressionReturnDrawingAcceptedConventionsBlack And WhiteConventionalAccustomedTranslationsObligedBeholder
Author:Eugene Delacroix
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“When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, 'The leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.”

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Author:Karel Appel
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“Skywalker is a direct translation of the word shaman out of the Tungusic, which is where Siberian shamanism comes from. So these heroes that are being instilled in the heart of the culture are shamanic heroes. They control a force which is bigger than everybody and holds the galaxy together.”

HeartTogetherCultureForceHeroDirectBiggerGalaxyTranslationsShamanism
Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival
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