Translation Quotes

“An illustrator is a translator. He is someone who translates a text into a picture.”

“Translation is the art of failure.”

“A translation is a performance.”

“Translation is a very good way of getting close to a text.”

“I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do.”

“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another.”

“Translation is at best an echo.”

“They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.”

“I believe in the art of translation as a substitute for the authority of the original.”

“The musician's function is to be a translator.”

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”

“Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another.”

“Translation is a kind of tightrope walk between the two languages.”

“Translation is not a matter of substituting words in one language for words in another, but of making the text work in a new context.”

“A translation is no translation... unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.”

“Translation is the purest, most intense form of reading.”

“I think the translator has to have a certain humility. You’re serving the author, you’re not serving yourself.”

“Translation is a kind of reading, in a way. I mean, you have to read the book so carefully.”

“Translate a book a day. You will grow as wise as is Seneca.”

“What you get is a living voice, a voice that is speaking and being heard.”