A Quote by Lydia Davis

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

Quote Topics

Bad Could Idea Occur Often Original People Range Text Translation Translations Unfaithful Very Wide Wide Range

Quote Author

Lydia Davis
American - Novelist
Born: July 15, 1947

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Jorge Luis Borges

Before 9/11, I was playing a wide range of characters. I would play a lover, a cop, a father. As long as I could create the illusion of the character, the part was given to me. But after 9/11, something changed. We became the villains, the bad guys. I don't mind to play the bad guy as long as the bad guy has a base.

Navid Negahban

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

Walter Benjamin

To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.

Tom Stoppard

We should invest in people not ideas. A good idea is often destroyed by bad people and good people can always make a bad idea better.

Simon Sinek

More often than not, the belief that you are bad contributes to the "bad" behavior. Change and learning occur most readily when you (a) recognize that an error has occurred and (b) develop a strategy for correcting the problem. An attitude of self-love and relaxation facilitates this, whereas guilt often interferes.

David D. Burns

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

I think of translations as passing some scholarly smell test: you can read the words of the translation and be reasonably sure of what the words are in the original.

Christian Wiman

My children are 12, 12, 8, and 7, which is bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, for mom going inside.

Kellyanne Conway

A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.

E. L. Doctorow

I want as many people to see the show [Hamilton] in its musical theater form as possible before it's translated, and whether it's a good act of translation or a bad act of translation, it's a leap, and very few stage shows manage the leap successfully.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

When it comes to partisan politics, everyone is a hypocrite. And all they care about is whether it hurts or helps them ... Is it good or bad for the Democrats? Is it good or bad for the Republicans? Is it good or bad for Jews, or good or bad for blacks, or is it good or bad for women? Is it good or bad for men? Is it good or bad for gays? That's the way people think about issues today. There is very little discussion of enduring principles.

Alan Dershowitz

It is fair to say that I am generally very bad at keeping in touch - with everyone. When I read a text, my brain seems to think that I have replied to it, and so I am often genuinely surprised when people tell me I haven't.

Romesh Ranganathan

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

Tavis Smiley

One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.

Tom Stoppard

The bad things don't seem to happen to bad people.' That's because they already did. There's no original evil left in the world.