Top 37 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Translators

A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets.

I’ve never known fear; as a youth I fought/ In endless battles. I am old, now,/ But I will fight again, seek fame still,/ If the dragon hiding in his tower dares/ To face me

It must never be unpatriotic to support your country against your government. It must always be unpatriotic to support your government against your country.

There is a saying in China that the nature of man is found there, in the center, where emotions are not yet manifest. In this center is the potentiality of everything to come.

Translating is a respectable, valuable, creative and worthwhile use of a human brain.

Just go along with things and let your mind move freely. Resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish what is within you - this is best. What more do you have to do to fulfill your mission? Nothing is as good as following orders (obeying fate) - that's how difficult it is!

Thurst [thrust] out nature with a croche [crook], yet woll she styll runne back agayne.

Keep off your thoughts from things that are past and done; for thinking of the past wakes regret and pain.

There are three proven rules for good teeth: brush after every meal; see your dentist twice a year; and mind your own business.

The tax that is taken from the free non-Muslim subjects of a Muslim government whereby they ratify the compact that assures them protection, as though it were compensation for not being slain.

For those of us who take literature very seriously, picking up a work of fiction is the start of an adventure comparable in anticipatory excitement to what I imagine is felt by an athlete warming up for a competition, a mountain climber preparing for the ascent: it is the beginning of a process whose outcome is unknown, one that promises the thrill and elation of success but may as easily end in bitter disappointment. Committed readers realize at a certain point that literature is where we have learned a good part of the little we know about living.

Modern Arabic literature achieved international recognition when Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel prize in 1988 (.....) Mahfouz also rendered Arabic literature a great service by developing, over the years, a form of language in which many of the archaisms and cliches that had become fashionable were discarded, a language that could serve as an adequate instrument for the writing of fiction in these times.

Time, for all its smuggling in of new problems, conspicuously cancels others.

There are no footprints on the sea and no road-signs, not a single guard-stone or post, and no bends, only paths of light and dark from which to choose, the choice is always a difficult navigation and the storm's wingspan immeasurable as the depths and the horizon, but the sea holds you in its mighty hand your life is a sea-blue tale of love and death.

Beloved Beowulf, remember how you boasted, Once, that nothing in the world would ever Destroy your fame; fight to keep it, Now, be strong and brave, my noble King, protecting life and fame Together. My sword will fight at your side!

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.

Fate will unwind as it must!

No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money.

We now should be able to see cosmos and individual joined in a relationship. We should see that macrocosm and microcosm are, as it were, only far-flung parts of one unified energy center.

In painting as in prose, a good eye is not enough to tell you whether what you see is real or fake.

Every act of communication is an act of translation.

All of Chinese thinking - Confucianism, Taoism, as well as Buddhism - contains the idea that in the course of life, man will shape harmoniously those psychic and physical predispositions that he received as capital assets by unifying them and giving them form from within a center.

Abstain from beans. There be sundry interpretations of this symbol. But Plutarch and Cicero think beans to be forbidden of Pythagoras, because they be windy and do engender impure humours and for that cause provoke bodily lust.

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

Teaching translation is more of an editing job. You act as editor. But you can have fun with it.

If intellect and will are correctly centered, the emotional life takes on harmony.

The government of the enlightened king? His achievements blanket the world but appear not to be his own doing. His transforming influence touches the ten thousand things but the people do not depend on him. With him there is no promotion or praise - he lets everything find its own enjoyment. He takes his stand on what cannot be fathomed and wanders where there is nothing at all.

If you are digging for excellent or suggestive renderings, this is among the richer mines.

One of my favorite tricks was taking a page and having the first student translate it from English into whatever language he or she was working on, and the next one would translate it back into English and then into the foreign language, and we'd go around the room and compare the two English versions at the end, and it would be amazing how much survived.

The cypress boat is frequently a symbol of fluctuating intention.

Quickly, the dragon came at him, encouraged As Beowulf fell back; its breath flared, And he suffered, wrapped around in swirling Flames -- a king, before, but now A beaten warrior. None of his comrades Came to him, helped him, his brave and noble Followers; they ran for their lives, fled Deep in a wood. And only one of them Remained, stood there, miserable, remembering, As a good man must, what kinship should mean.

Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing, which makes it so difficult in this age of fervent belief and ideology, this age or greed and screed.

The singular man is singular in comparison to other men, but a companion of Heaven. So it is said, the petty man of Heaven is a gentleman among men; the gentleman among men is the petty man of Heaven.

Art does not have to be dull, to be effective; the artist does not have to be a bore, to be real.

The practice of translation rests on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all the same - that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth. Without both of these suppositions, translation could not exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life. Translation is another name for the human condition.

Anarchism is a theory of political science and is opposed to government in the political sense.

When you hear Portuguese, if you're listening fleetingly, it's as if you're hearing Russian, which never happens with Spanish. Because the Portuguese and the Russians share the open vowels and the dark "L," the "owL" sound.