A Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Anything Anything Else Art Art Of Writing Else Entirely Felt Increasingly Itself Like More Mysterious Than Translation Writing

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Ursula K. Le Guin
American - Novelist
October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Ursula K. Le Guin

But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating.

John Fowles

Writing by myself, I spread that out more. I'll spend more time on a song then. I'm more critical about it, because there's no one else in the room to tell me, 'That's really not translating. I'm not getting what you're saying.' So, I'm constantly rewriting it, thinking, 'No, that's fine,' and going back.

Hunter Hayes

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Iris Murdoch

If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire.

Marshall McLuhan

When we translate, we always to some extent betray the text we are translating. That is why translation is so hard and thankless. All you can do is to fail in the least egregious way possible.

Jay L. Garfield

Translating is writing.

Marguerite Yourcenar

I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet.

Henry David Thoreau

I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.

Viola Davis

The people I've met -- obviously, the people I'm going to meet after concerts are people that bother to hang around and there's going to be more of a chance of things translating to them because they're going to take more time over it, if they're going to wait around to meet us. But so far, it does seem as if things written down are translating into people actually buying it, that kind of way.

James Dean Bradfield

I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much.

Haruki Murakami

It seems more than likely that the translating of poetry is going to rub off on the translator if he or she is a poet.

Ron Padgett

I try to be as honest as I can in writing. That's what ends up translating and relating to people.

Kelsea Ballerini

I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing.

Nancy Mitford

I find it interesting that people often seem to believe that authors of realistic fiction are directly translating their personal experiences into their work. The fact is that telling a story is a transformative experience. There is rarely a one-to-one translation onto the page unless you're writing memoir, and even then, memory is unreliable. I think that the best books feel emotionally true, and that truth has to be rooted in real-world experience.

Malinda Lo

I'm more interested in moving toward writing stories - thinking about the graphic novel form, and just something more long-form. I did a lot of literary translation in college. Translation is an art. But for sure writing has always been a part of how I think through my ideas.

Chitra Ganesh

A Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

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