#translation

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers. ↗

— Edith Hamilton

#translations #beauty

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure. ↗

— Anne Carson

#experience

I wouldn’t really know too much about pressure. I stay away from it like snow in the Sahara. That reminds me, isn’t it funny how an adage might get lost in cultural translation? For instance, take the saying, “Don’t eat yellow snow.” Well, try telling that to a Bedouin who’s never left the desert and has never seen pictures of other climates. You might have to rephrase it to, “Never eat yellow sand,” which is sort of silly. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#desert #funny #humor #pressure #surreal

And after I started working for the Bureau, most of my translation duties included translations of documents and investigations that actually started way before 9/11. ↗

— Sibel Edmonds

#after #before #bureau #documents #duties

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. ↗

— Havelock Ellis

#arts #beautiful #because #dancing #itself

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit. ↗

— Jonathan Lethem

#english #fantastic #kind #summit #translation

What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is. ↗

— Jonathan Miller

#does #interesting #literature #made #makes

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation. ↗

— John Denham

#genius #his #less #nor #ought

Through me is the way to the city of woe. Through me is the way to sorrow eternal. Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal. I was constructed by divine power, supreme wisdom, and love primordial. Before me no created things were. Save those eternal, and eternal I abide. Abandon all hope, you who enter. ↗

— Dante Alighieri

#hell #inferno #stanley-lombardo-translation #love

In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it’s indispensable. ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

#love