#translations

it is better to have red a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all. ↗

— Henry Gratton Doyle

#don-quixote #great-novels-in-translation #the-art-of-translation #translation #translations

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

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. ↗

— Peadar Ó Guilín

#interpreting #lost-in-translation #translations #change

The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#english #translations #jesus

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

It was real Cheyenne. I would get the translations the night before, but it was very difficult because it was not like any other language you would be familiar with. ↗

— Joe Lando

#because #before #difficult #familiar #get

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations. ↗

— Ezra Pound

#always #great #literature #perhaps #translations

I'm not a best-seller, but through translations, I've accumulated some money. ↗

— Manuel Puig

#i #money #some #through #translations

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life. ↗

— Voltaire

#every #gives #indeed #kills #letter

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness. ↗

— Edwin Booth

#best #books #cannot #convey #darkness