A Quote by Jay L. Garfield

When we translate, we always to some extent betray the text we are translating. That is why translation is so hard and thankless. All you can do is to fail in the least egregious way possible.

Jay L. Garfield

Quote Topics

Always Betray Extent Fail Hard Least Possible Some Text Thankless Translate Translation Way Why

Quote Author

Jay L. Garfield
American - Author
Born: 1955

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures.

Lawrence Venuti

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

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ecology is the new theology. Big history is the new Genesis. Those who fail to understand that evidence is modern-day Scripture, and that the world we live in is an honorable world, betray God and humanity in the most egregious of ways.

Michael Dowd

With Orff it is text, text, text - the music always subordinate. Not so with me. In 'Magnificat,' the text is important, but in some places I'm writing just music and not caring about text. Sometimes I'm using extremely complicated polyphony where the text is completely buried. So no, I am not another Orff, and I'm not primitive.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet.

Henry David Thoreau

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

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

Paul Auster

But actually a code is a language for translating one thing into another. And mathematics is the language of science. My big thesis is that although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are.

Marcus du Sautoy

The goal of Bible translation is be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

Leland Ryken

The goal of Bible translation is: be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

Leland Ryken

I don't read in Chinese very well. Google Translate helps with that. It's cool that I can upload a photo and translate the text from it.

Jimmy O. Yang

It's not always thankless. Let's face it - it's not always thankless. I've gotten a lot of really great recognition and I've worked with amazing people.

Kyra Sedgwick

I would feel pretty embarrassed if I was doing what I do and I wasn't at least attempting the eloquent translation of the human experience in some way.