#translation

Let not the rash marble risk garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence, in many words recalling name, renown, events, birthplace. All those glass jewels are best left in the dark. Let not the marble say what men do not. The essentials of the dead man's life-- the trembling hope, the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight-- will abide forever. Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue when it is the lives of others that will make that happen, as you yourself are the mirror and image of those who did not live as long as you and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#inscription-on-any-tomb #life #mortality #philosophy #self

In Iraq, interpreters were ten times more likely to be killed than were U.S. troops. ↗

— Nataly Kelly

#language #linguistics #translation #iraq

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation. ↗

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

#gives #seldom #selects #translation #true

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

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

— Cyril Connolly

#into #liberty #translation #unhampered #will

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

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

When you stop to examine the way in which our words are formed and uttered, our sentences are hard-put to it to survive the disaster of their slobbery origins. The mechanical effort of conversation is nastier and more complicated than defecation. That corolla of bloated flesh, the mouth, which screws itself up to whistle, which sucks in breath, contorts itself, discharges all manner of viscous sounds across a fetid barrier of decaying teeth—how revolting! Yet that is what we are adjured to sublimate into an ideal. It's not easy. Since we are nothing but packages of tepid, half-rotted viscera, we shall always have trouble with sentiment. Being in love is nothing, its sticking together that's difficult. Feces on the other hand make no attempt to endure or grow. On this score we are far more unfortunate than shit; our frenzy to persist in ourpresent state—that's the unconscionable torture. Unquestionably we worship nothing more divine than our smell. All our misery comes from wanting at all costs to go on being Tom, Dick, or Harry, year in year out. This body of ours, this disguise put on by common jumping molecules, is in constant revolt against the abominable farce of having to endure. Our molecules, the dears, want to get lost in the universe as fast as they can! It makes them miserable to be nothing but 'us,' the jerks of infinity. We'd burst if we had the courage, day after day we come very close to it. The atomic torture we love so is locked up inside us by our pride. ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

#courage