#translations

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

It was real Cheyenne. I would get the translations the night before, but it was very difficult because it was not like any other language you would be familiar with. ↗

— Joe Lando

#because #before #difficult #familiar #get

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