A Quote by Gregory Rabassa
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.
Related Quotes
In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.
Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.
There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth!
For me, every translation is a new book, with the translator inevitably broadening the meaning of the original book in any translation.
The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.
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.
I always say that Juventus should be judged in March and you can see why. We have found a system that gets the best out of the quality we have in the squad and ticks all the boxes.
My metaphor for translation has always been that translation is really a performance art. You take the original and try to perform it, really, in a different medium. Part of that is about interpretation and what you think the author's voice really is.
I do feel that there are things you can learn from an artist, but I think you need to be very close to that person, and to know that person fairly well, in order to acquire anything from them. I do have a teacher myself, and I have learned quite a lot from my teacher, but it's not how to make a film. It's more how to approach my life as a director, how to approach and how to lie to a producer.
'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded.
I never got close to the creative in AWA; not only was I not close to it, I wasn't allowed to be in a room close to it when they were talking about creative. That is how tightly held Verne Gagne believed in kayfabing people who he didn't believe needed to be in the process.
What I've done from the very beginning is play everything with extreme accuracy. I never said to myself, 'Okay, if I put my fingers this way, it's gonna result in this.' I've never taken a lesson. My way of playing the guitar was a fresh approach to the instrument.
True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.
In regards to those other franchises that are being remade, we must take pains to mention that we're the only one where the original creators are actually making the movie. It's a special feel of quality, like a Good Housekeeping quality.
In the end we won't be judged as a society solely by our growth statistics or economic activity graphs. We will be judged by the quality of the life that we foster for all members of the community and the compassion we show for the disadvantaged.
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