#translation

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

All religions are based on obsolete terminology. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#philosophy #philosophy-of-religion #religion #theology #translation

Det var det der holdt mig vågen om natten," sagde Walter. "Den her opsplitning af landet. For det er det samme problem overalt. Det er ligesådan med internettet eller kabel-tv - der er aldrig noget centrum, der er ingen fælles enighed, der er bare en billion forskellige distraherende støjkilder. Vi kan aldrig sætte os og føre en vedvarende samtale, det er bare billigt skrammel og en lorteudvikling, det hele. Alt det ægte, alt det autentiske, alt det ærlige dør ud. Intellektuelt og kulturelt bliver vi kastet omkring som tilfældige billiardkugler og reagerer på den seneste tilfældige stimulans. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#freedom #frihed #oversættelse #translation #freedom

But when you are week the best way to fortify yourself is to strip the people you fear of the last bit of prestige you’re still inclined to give them. Learn to consider them they are, worse than they are in fact and from every point of view. That will release you, set you free, protect you more than you can possibly imagine. It will give you another self. There will be two of you. That will strip their words and deeds of the obscene mystical fascination that weakens you and makes you waste your time. From then on you’ll find their act no more amusing, no more relevant to your inner progress than that of the lowliest pig. ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

#imagination

Reading a poem in translation," wrote Bialek, "is like kissing a woman through a veil"; and reading Greek poems, with a mixture of katharevousa and the demotic, is like kissing two women. Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications. ↗

— Anne Michaels

#life

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