#translation

Translation is the art of failure. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#failure #translation

By reason of weird translation, many such sets of instructions read like poems anyhow. ↗

— Brian Ferneyhough

#instructions #like #many #poems #read

I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned. ↗

— Jung Chang

#book #china #chinese #copies #gone

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act? ↗

— Cyril Connolly

#into #liberty #translation #unhampered #will

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#being #being honest #book #finished #here

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#books #encourage #feel #gesture #heroic

The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested. ↗

— Utada Hikaru

#could #different #find #interested #japanese

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good. ↗

— Guillermo del Toro

#diary #doing #good #i #ideas

Like that breeder-woman sitting at the bar, who thinks it's a buzz to go into a gay joint and has no doubt heard somewhere that this is one. Her lurid get-up's a joke, ludicrous. She's the type who dons the camouflage-green combat trousers, wraps a bandanna around her head and paints herself with black lipstick, imagining all the lesbians in the joint'll have the hots for her. Not so much imagining as secretly hoping. Naturally, no one goes and sits with her. She's been here before, and everyone gives the ice-cold shoulder, yet she still turns up again and again. Someone might argue we're zoo animals for her. But I've another theory. For her, we're noble savages, a kind of grey area outside the respectable, minutely organized community, an untamed wilderness it takes a lot of guts to step into. But if you do dare, there's a glorious smell of freedom floating around your trousers and giving the finger to society, making whoever an instant anarchist. Certainly, for her, coming here is like putting a washable tattoo on your shoulder : there's the thrill of deviance with none of the dull commitment - and she'll never have to wonder whether she's too weird to be seen out before dark. ↗

— Johanna Sinisalo

#glbtq #herbert-lomas-translation #heteronormativity #lesbians #not-before-sundown

It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his adopted work. More impartial readers may not be so much struck with the beauties of this piece as I was. Yet I am not blind to my author's defects. ↗

— Horace Walpole

#beauty