Translation Quotes

“Yo soy carne muerta. Translation: I am dead meat.”

“So writing stories is not easier in comparison to the playwriting or translation; the stories are easier in league with them.”

“I'm trying to find the balance and do, like, 'Spanglish' music or some songs in Spanish and others in English or do a translation.”

“I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.”

“Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.”

“It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female’s nose must never shine. In war, in famine, in fire, it had to be matte, and no one got a lipstick without the requisite face powder. … I was taunted by the problem: how could someone write something like the ‘Symposium’ and make sure her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn’t matter to me that I was reading a translation. I’d read Plato’s brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself away. Even as a reader my nose shined. It was clearly either/or. You had to concentrate on either one or the other. In a New York minute, the oil from Saudi Arabia could infiltrate your house and end up on your nose. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t make noise, it didn’t incapacitate in any way except for the fact that no girl worth her salt took enough time away from vigilance to read a book let alone write one.”

“If you've got some to say to Ric Flair, you come say it to me, and I'll make the translation.”

“Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the world.”

“I want the real story, the one that won’t make it into the history books or the scientific journals.”“And you think I’m the man to tell it, do you?”“If you were actually there, you are most definitely the person to tell it. You’re absolutely right. There have been plenty of stories. The trouble is, every account is different. Most of them are second or third hand. I don’t know . . . I guess I figured, maybe since you weren’t in such a rush to tell your version, it might be the closest to the truth.”Garvey chuckled heartily. “Well, I can’t argue with that logic, son. Despite my choice of reading materials . . .” he nodded towards the adventure novel he’d set down, a recent translation of the French novel by Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, “I’ve never been one for unnecessary embellishment. You want the God’s honest truth? In this particular case, there’s no need. It’s a hell of a goddamn story.” I was already flipping open a notebook and licking the tip of a sharpened pencil to take notes. I may have been salivating.”

“Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.”

“O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.” – from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)”

“Scarlett Johansson has a smile she tries to suppress in every movie she makes. She's been trying to keep a straight face since she appeared with Bill Murray 11 years ago in her breakthrough, 'Lost in Translation.'”

“If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”

“Sometimes words are just a crude translation of love.”

“Democracy does not speak in unison; its tunes are dissonant, and necessarily so. It is not a predictable process; it must be undergone, as a passion must be undergone. It may also be that life itself becomes foreclosed when the right way is decided in advance, or when we impose what is right for everyone, without finding a way to enter into community and discover the "right" in the midst of cultural translation. It may be that what is "right" and what is "good" consist in staying open to the tensions that beset the most fundamental categories we require, to know unknowingness at the core of what we know.”