A Quote by Idra Novey

I have a deep love for the art of translation, and I couldn't find a novel that captured the fascinating, reckless adventure of it as I'd experienced it, or portrayed translators as the passionate risk-takers that so many of the translators I know are. So I wrote the book I couldn't find.

Idra Novey

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Idra Novey
American - Novelist

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

Michael Cunningham

Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.

Milan Kundera

I teach Korean translation at the British Centre for Literary Translation summer school, so I see an emerging generation too, who are around my age. I'm hoping to find time to mentor, and to help emerging translators to a first contract through Tilted Axis.

Deborah Smith

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

Elif Safak

I translated an Emile Zola book, 'The Belly of Paris,' because I didn't find an existing translation that captured his sense of humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.

Mark Kurlansky

It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.

Virginia Woolf

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!

Daniel Wallace

Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that's just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English.

Daniel Kehlmann

I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.

Adam Morris

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Men talk of "the mistakes of Scripture." I thank God that I have never met with any. Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men. But mistakes of the original word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest.

Charles Spurgeon

I've never translated more than one book by any author. But I'm fascinated by translators who have, like Richard Zenith, who's translated so much of Fernando Pessoa's work. I get restless for a new kind of influence. The books I've translated are books I want to learn from as a writer, to be intoxicated by. And translation is an act of writing in itself. It's an act of recreation - of a writer's cadence and tone and everything that distinguishes the voice in the book.

Idra Novey

Even though I believe a superlative translation can achieve timelessness, that doesn't mean I think other translators shouldn't attempt other versions. The more the better, in the end.

Lydia Davis

Many of the Central Asians know Russian, and Ted Levin speaks it fluently. I speak Chinese, but Mongolian is completely different, so we had to have translators.

Yo-Yo Ma

Wherever we find news, excitement, mystery and adventure, there, too, we find the newspaper reporter. Always on the alert for something new, ready to risk his very life for a scoop and finding adventure in every corner of the globe.

Stan Lee

Translators have to prove to themselves as to others that they are in control of what they do; that they do not just translate well because they have a "flair" for translation, but rather because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to understand various aspects of their work.

Mona Baker

A Quote by Idra Novey

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