A Quote by Gunter Grass

Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.

Gunter Grass

Quote Topics

Changes Everything Nothing Translation Which

Quote Author

Gunter Grass
German - Novelist
October 16, 1927 - April 13, 2015

It changes everything, absolutely everything. The love you feel for your child transforms everything. Now you have someone helpless and tiny that depends on you and only you. You look at him and know that your world is focused on him, on that part of you.

Gerard Pique

The oldest cliché in the world is about "what's lost in translation," but you don't very often read much intelligent about what's gained by translation, and the answer is everything. Our language is a compendium of translation.

Sam Hamill

Do not forget, read a passage from the Gospel every day. It is the power that changes us, that transforms us, it changes life and it changes the heart.

Pope Francis

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

Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.

Frida Kahlo

Our present-day artists do not transform, they deform. That gives pleasure to nobody. It changes everything, therefore it changes nothing.

Adrienne Monnier

Enlightenment is not an attainment; it is a realization. And when you wake up, everything changes and nothing changes. If a blind man realizes that he can see, has the world changed?

Dan Millman

One good wish changes nothing. But one good decision changes everything. Your power to choose, to make a good decision, spells the difference between wishing and making real life changes.

Steve Goodier

When a translation is very good, it is fascinating to see how the book changes and yet stays the same. I think 'Out Stealing Horses' sounds more American for Americans than it does in Norway, and still, it is all there, everything that I wrote. It's amazing.

Per Petterson

Condemnation feels good and it is now a staple of religion, politics, and the media (both left and right), but it changes nothing. Compassion, on the other hand, changes everything. (p. 121)

Robin Meyers

This changes nothing. It can't. You are my friend, my king,but that's.... All you can be." He nodded, but it was a gesture that indicated that he heard her, not that he agreed, which was abundantly clear as he said, "And you are my queen, my savior, my partner---and that's everything.

Melissa Marr

Everything is in flux: everything changes; the body changes, the soul changes. We are capable of extraordinary self-transmutat ion and internal self-transforma tion.

Clive Barker

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.

George Henry Lewes

Everything is a meaningless struggle against nothing and when people say that the world has become a better place that is a false development-optimism. Nothing exists which ever becomes better. Everything stays the same. Somehow, there is nothing. That is so sad. Nothing to come to. Everything is an illusion. A very sweet illusion.