A Quote by Lydia Davis

In some sense the text and the translator are locked in struggle - 'I attacked that sentence, it resisted me, I attacked another, it eluded me' - a struggle in which, curiously, when the translator wins, the text wins too.

Lydia Davis

Quote Topics

Another Attacked Locked Me Sense Sentence Some Struggle Text Too Translator Which Wins

Quote Author

Lydia Davis
American - Novelist
Born: July 15, 1947

The translator has to be a good writer. The translator has to hear music too. And it might not be exactly your music because the translator needs to translate the music. And so, that is what you are hoping for: a translator who gets what you are doing but who also gets all the ways in which it won't work in the new language.

Sam Lipsyte

With Orff it is text, text, text - the music always subordinate. Not so with me. In 'Magnificat,' the text is important, but in some places I'm writing just music and not caring about text. Sometimes I'm using extremely complicated polyphony where the text is completely buried. So no, I am not another Orff, and I'm not primitive.

Krzysztof Penderecki

When a translator translates my book, it is no longer just my book. It is the translator's book, too. So the book in another language is almost the work of two people. And that is quite interesting to me.

Sam Lipsyte

Translated literature can be fascinating. There's something so intriguing about reading the text second hand - a piece of prose that has already been through an extra filter, another consciousness, in the guise of the translator. Some of my favorite writers who have written in English were doing so without English being their first language, so there's a sense of distance or of distortion there, too. Conrad. Nabokov. These writers were employing English in interesting ways.

Katie Kitamura

Whether you're Godard or Almodovar or Scorsese, it's text, text, text. Everything begins with the text, and this is a source of great anguish to me. So please let cinema get on with doing what it does best, which is expressing ideas in visual terms.

Peter Greenaway

When women live rich, in every sense of the word - financially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually - everyone wins: you win, your family wins, your community wins, and the world wins.

Marie Forleo

to read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of a text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of trying to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing

David Lodge

To me a translator is very, very important. If the fixer is also the translator, so much the better. I have known photographers who didn't speak the language and would work in a place for weeks without one, getting by on common sense and smiles. But how many situations did they miss because they couldn't talk to someone and get the back story on details, small daily life things, etc.

Peter Menzel

It's important to get a translator who will ask the questions in a sensitive and thoughtful way. Knowing the ethnicity issues, the tribal issues in some places...who your translator is can mean a lot.

Peter Menzel

I have always maintained that translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text. The translator cannot ignore "lesser" words, but must consider every jot and tittle.

Gregory Rabassa

The translator of prose is the slave of the author, and the translator of poetry is his rival.

Andreï Makine

A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

Gregory Rabassa

The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out looking like a brand-new glove again. I'm completely in awe of this skill, since I happen to be both bilingual and a writer, but nevertheless a lousy translator.

Alma Guillermoprieto

The person sending ironic text messages has no idea that their voice does not sound so great in text. There's no dry sense of humor in a text. It comes off as a little bit shitty.

Natasha Lyonne

I overanalyze things way too much, to the point where it affects my life. Like, when I'm talking to a boy, I'll overanalyze a text message he sent. And I have to think to myself, 'Just chill out. Some guy sent me a text message. That's all. Don't read something into it that's not there. Just be glad he sent you a text message!'