32 Translation Quotes To Inspire

Language has the power to bridge cultures, convey deep emotions, and expand our horizons. When it comes to the nuanced art of translation, the challenge and beauty lie in transferring not only words but the essence of ideas across linguistic boundaries. If you're a lover of languages, a professional translator, or someone who appreciates the subtle craft of interpreting meaning, you'll find inspiration in these top 32 translation quotes. Carefully curated, these quotes capture the spirit of translation and its pivotal role in connecting our diverse world. Dive in to explore the wisdom and insight shared by notable thinkers and translators.

1. “Translation is at best an echo.” - George Borrow

2. “There can never be an absolutely final translation.” - Robert M. Grant

3. “[...] it is safer to wander without a guide through an unmapped country than to trust completely a map traced by men who came only as tourists and often with biased judgement. ” - Marie-Louise Sjoestedt

4. “Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. “So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.” - Amara Lakhous

6. “Let not the rash marble riskgarrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,in many words recallingname, renown, events, birthplace.All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.Let not the marble say what men do not.The essentials of the dead man's life--the trembling hope,the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--will abide forever.Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continuewhen it is the lives of others that will make that happen,as you yourself are the mirror and imageof those who did not live as long as youand others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.” - Jorge Luis Borges

7. “Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.” - Thomas A. Smail

8. “Oh, no-" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese- 'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat'.” - Gordon Korman

9. “But then it came time for me to make my journey—into America. [... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right.” - Don DeLillo

10. “The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.” - Salman Rushdie

11. “Larinas – profesorius, kuris moka lietuvių kalbą, o Šišova – poetė, kuri kiaurai pažįsta Cvirkiuką ir girdi, kaip skleidžiasi gėlelė. (Larinas is a professor who knows the Lithuanian language, but Šišova is a poet who understands Cvirka completely, and hears the flower blossoming)(Laiškas Z. Šišovai, Vilnius, 1947 m. balandžio 29 d., iš Petras Cvirka Raštai VII, Vilnius: Vaga, 1986.) ” - Petras Cvirka

12. “For me, therapy is partly translation therapy, the talking cure a second-language cure. My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: initiation into the language of the subculture within which I happen to live, into a way of explaining myself to myself. But gradually, it becomes a project of translating backward. The way to jump over my Great Divine is to crawl backward over it in English. It's only when I retell my whole story, back to the beginning, and from the beginning onward, in one language, that I can reconcile the voices within me with each other; it is only then that the person who judges the voices and tells the stories begins to emerge.” - Eva Hoffman

13. “The original language of Christianity is translation.” - Lamin Sanneh

14. “Semua tahu, Sayang...agar nasib baik tetap langgeng, kerendahan hati harus selalu dipelihara. Tidak peduli keajaiban apa yang dihadiahkan hidup padamu, jangan pernah membual tentang itu.” - Kavita Daswani

15. “In antiquity , for instance, one of the dominant images of the translators was that of a builder: his (usually it was him, not her) task was to carefully demolish a building, a structure (the source text), carry the bricks somewhere else (into the target culture), and construct a new building - with the same bricks.” - Andrew Chesterman

16. “Reading a poem in translation," wrote Bialek, "is like kissing a woman through a veil"; and reading Greek poems, with a mixture of katharevousa and the demotic, is like kissing two women. Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications.” - Anne Michaels

17. “I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.” - Anne Carson

18. “it is better to have red a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all.” - Henry Gratton Doyle

19. “A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark)” - Peter Newmark

20. “Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.” - Walter Benjamin

21. “Mythmaking is the evolutionary enterprise of translating truths.” - Terry Tempest Williams

22. “The world cannot be translated; It can only be dreamed of and touched.” - Dejan Stojanovic

23. “The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!” - Faiz Ahmed Faiz

24. “In a French accent developed through a lifetime of using English I said, 'Hello sir, I would like to row the English Channel in a bath please.'What actually arrived in the ear of the French Navy man was, 'Hello sire, I would like to fight a condom across a bath if you please.” - Tim Fitzhigham

25. “Love and translation look alike in their grammar. To love someone implies transforming their words into ours. Making an effort to understand the other person and, inevitably, to misinterpret them. To construct a precarious language together.” - Andres Neuman

26. “Poetry translation is like playing a piano sonata on a trombone.” - Nataly Kelly

27. “Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?” - Nataly Kelly

28. “To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.” - Nataly Kelly

29. “In Iraq, interpreters were ten times more likely to be killed than were U.S. troops.” - Nataly Kelly

30. “Goddess of song, teach me the storyof a hero.” - The Odyssey Oxford World Classics Ed.

31. “And on the subject of naming animals, can I just say how happy I was to discover that the word yeti, literally translated, apparently means "that thing over there." ("Quick, brave Himalayan Guide - what's that thing over there?""Yeti.""I see.")” - Neil Gaiman

32. “On Translating Eugene Onegin 1What is translation? On a platterA poet's pale and glaring head,A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,And profanation of the dead.The parasites you were so hard onAre pardoned if I have your pardon,O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:I traveled down your secret stem,And reached the root, and fed upon it;Then, in a language newly learned,I grew another stalk and turnedYour stanza patterned on a sonnet,Into my honest roadside prose--All thorn, but cousin to your rose.2Reflected words can only shiverLike elongated lights that twistIn the black mirror of a riverBetween the city and the mist.Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,I still pick up Tatiana's earring,Still travel with your sullen rake.I find another man's mistake,I analyze alliterationsThat grace your feasts and haunt the greatFourth stanza of your Canto Eight.This is my task--a poet's patienceAnd scholastic passion blent:Dove-droppings on your monument.” - Vladimir Nabokov