#translations

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

the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish. ↗

— Aubrey F.G. Bell

#cervantes #don-quixote #great-books #man-of-la-mancha #modern-library

Wherever modern translations of marked excellence were already in existence efforts were made to secure them for the Library, but in a number of instances copyright could not be obtained. ↗

— James Loeb

#copyright #could #efforts #excellence #existence

Nowadays we are fond of literal translations...That would have seemed a crime to translators in ages past...They wanted to prove that the vernacular was as capable of a great poem as the original. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#translations #age

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand. ↗

— Fredrik Bajer

#also #been #demand #doubt #english

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong. ↗

— John Lennon

#buddha #call #god #gone #i

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries. ↗

— Martin C. Smith

#different #different way #done #fascinating #passage

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