A Quote by Terry Teachout

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

Terry Teachout

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Able Being Definition Inadequate Masterpiece Original Read Substitute Translation Yes

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Terry Teachout
American - Critic
Born: February 6, 1956

There is no intellectual or emotional substitute for the authentic, the original, the unique masterpiece.

Paul Mellon

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

Yes. The original argument is defective. Substitute the word 'male' for 'gay,' and you'll see the flaw: 'Male people cannot be normal. If everyone were male starting tomorrow, the human race would die out, so being male cannot be nature's intended way.' Or you could substitute the word 'female.' In either case, the argument makes no sense: Being male or female is perfectly normal.

Marilyn vos Savant

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

Joseph Brodsky

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

There's really no substitute for being able to sit across from someone, have eye contact, see and read their body language, hear the inflection in their voice in a real way.

Margaret Brennan

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

Just as there is no substitute for original works of art, there is no substitute for the world of direct sensual experience.

Paul Mellon

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

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

Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

Brene Brown

I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong.

Karl Ove Knausgard

I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.

Wislawa Szymborska

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

Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language. So we're talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people's lives in history.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

A Quote by Terry Teachout

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