A Quote by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!

Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Quote Topics

At Least One Bloody First Know Languages Least Make Rule Sure Translation

Quote Author

Faiz Ahmad Faiz
Pakistani - Poet
February 13, 1911 - November 20, 1984

I don't speak any languages well enough to make an expert assessment on writing in translation, but since I'm interested in awkwardness in prose, I find I like the way translated texts can sometimes acquire awkwardness in the process of translation. There's a discordance translation can create which I think is sometimes seen as a weakness but which I think can be a really interesting aspect of the text.

Katie Kitamura

Walter Benjamin used to think that languages expand their register thanks to translation, because translation forces ways of using words and structures that were alien to the original speaker of the target language.

Alvaro Enrigue

You know rule one for the vice president is make sure you never upstage the president, right? It's rule one.

Ed Rendell

In translation studies we talk about domestication - translation styles that make something familiar - or estrangement - translation styles that make something radically different. I use a lot of both in my translation, and modernism does both. For instance, if you look at the way James Joyce presents Ulysses, is that domesticating a classic? Think of it as an experiment in relation to a well-known text in another language.

Elliott Colla

Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.

David Mitchell

I wanted to know if the 'Iliad' in the original was as relevant and contemporary as it was in translation. I then started Latin. I had finally found something I enjoyed and was good at: dead languages!

Caroline Lawrence

With Ibrahim al-Koni, what I figured out was - and you'll see this in his novels - if your time is limited, make the unit of the chapters small so that you can finish one a day, at least in the first draft. Once you have the first draft it's living, and you can coax it to grow and trim it and reshape it and so on. But get that first draft. I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

Elliott Colla

There are rules for hiding in plain sight. The first rule, or at least the one that Sandor repeats most often, is “Don’t be stupid.” I’m about to break that rule by taking off my pants.

Pittacus Lore

Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language. So we're talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people's lives in history.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The thing about all these charities is that who sees where the money goes? I don't and you don't. For all I know, the president of Make a Wish just used all the money to buy himself a mansion and a yacht. That's why I keep all of my money for myself, at least then I know I'm doing good for at least one person for sure.

Zach Braff

I don't know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people's websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries.

Tim Berners-Lee

I know the college rule is if they push you out of bounds, you can come back in and catch the ball, but I think the NFL rule is it doesn't matter how you get out of bounds, you can't be the first one to touch the ball. That's what I think it is, I'm not really sure on that.

Amari Cooper

Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books into forty-five different languages. Almost none of them I can read. I can read only the English editions. But, I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque. So, different musical instruments provide for different music.