A Quote by Robert Fitzgerald

What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Robert Fitzgerald

Quote Topics

Comparable Does Doing Myself Particular Performer Translator

Quote Author

Robert Fitzgerald
American - Author
October 12, 1910 - January 16, 1985

The translator has to be a good writer. The translator has to hear music too. And it might not be exactly your music because the translator needs to translate the music. And so, that is what you are hoping for: a translator who gets what you are doing but who also gets all the ways in which it won't work in the new language.

Sam Lipsyte

The translator of prose is the slave of the author, and the translator of poetry is his rival.

Andreï Makine

I didn't want to admit that I was a performer. A performer meant spotlights - a performer had connotations of theater. I would have preferred agent to performer.

Vito Acconci

A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

Gregory Rabassa

There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric god. I cannot prove that either the Christian god or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration.

Bertrand Russell

A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.

Nick Harkaway

When I get hired as an actor as opposed to a writer, one of things that's exciting for me is doing stuff I wouldn't normally do myself. So whether it's a kid's movie or a voice in animation or in this case - where I just get to be silly, it's a different kind of comedy for me. As a performer, it's a different pleasure than when you're writing or directing. As a performer, you're just in the hands of the director and you go with whatever they want to do.

Stephen Merchant

The position of vice president does not exist in France; neither does a role comparable that of the first lady of the United States.

Elaine Sciolino

Everybody is calling me crazy because I want to do the Ironman. I'm not doing it to win it. I'm doing it to finish it. I'm racing myself, not a particular field or group of people.

Alex Zanardi

It's important to get a translator who will ask the questions in a sensitive and thoughtful way. Knowing the ethnicity issues, the tribal issues in some places...who your translator is can mean a lot.

Peter Menzel

'Theogony' should be read before the great Homeric epics because it gives an account of the cosmology that is taken for granted by Homer. It does for paganism what the Old Testament attempted to do for monotheism.

Tariq Ali

When a translator translates my book, it is no longer just my book. It is the translator's book, too. So the book in another language is almost the work of two people. And that is quite interesting to me.

Sam Lipsyte

What is the task of the translator? I think the task depends on the book and on the translator.

Idra Novey

When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album.

Van Morrison

I'm not running from any particular problems, I just want to take some time and figure out in my life where I can keep doing what I'm doing but in a way that I can also honor what I want to do for myself.