#translation

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

#gives #seldom #selects #translation #true

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

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

— Cyril Connolly

#into #liberty #translation #unhampered #will

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

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

Translation is at best an echo. ↗

— George Borrow

#echo #translation

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

Oh, no-" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese- 'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat'. ↗

— Gordon Korman

#joke #jonah-wizard #mistake #translation #humor

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure. ↗

— Anne Carson

#experience