A Quote by Jorge Luis Borges

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Jorge Luis Borges

Quote Topics

Original Translation Unfaithful

Quote Author

Jorge Luis Borges
Argentinian - Poet
August 24, 1899 - June 14, 1986

Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn't occur to people - or that a translation could be bad, very bad, and unfaithful to the original.

Lydia Davis

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

Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.

Joseph Brodsky

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

For me, every translation is a new book, with the translator inevitably broadening the meaning of the original book in any translation.

Agustin Fernandez Mallo

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

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.

Ken Liu

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.

Walter Benjamin

The original language of Christianity is translation.

Lamin Sanneh

Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second.

Lawrence Venuti

I want my voice to be consistent no matter if it's an original or a translation.

Karin Tidbeck

The translation called good has original value as a work of art.

Benedetto Croce

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

Yes, translation is by definition an inadequate substitute for being able to read a masterpiece in the original.

Terry Teachout

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.