46 Inspiring Translation Quotes

In the intricate dance between languages, translation acts as both a bridge and an art form, transforming words and ideas into new linguistic landscapes. Whether you're a professional translator, a student of languages, or simply someone who delights in the nuances of communication, delving into the world of translation offers a rich tapestry of inspiration. In this collection, we've gathered 46 quotes that capture the essence, challenge, and beauty of translation. These quotes, drawn from renowned translators, authors, and thinkers, will not only inspire those involved in the craft but also offer profound insights into the shared human experience of trying to understand each other across language barriers. Join us on this journey to celebrate the words that unite us.

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. “In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.” - Orson Welles

6. “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

7. “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

8. “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

9. “Seperti halnya seni, yang kata orang adalah dusta yang kudus, karya terjemahan pun kadang harus berkhianat untuk menunjukkan kesuciannya.” - Bahterawan

10. “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

11. “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.” - Walter Benjamin

12. “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

13. “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

14. “The night is a strawberry.” - Louise Penny

15. “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

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

17. “One of the others shouted a translation: "The beautiful couple is beautiful.” - John Green, The Fault In Our Stars

18. “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

19. “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

20. “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

21. “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

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

23. “There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.” - Peter Newmark

24. “Translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the special purpose of demonstrating the learner's knowledge of the foreign language, either as a form of control or to exercise his intelligence in order to develop his competence.” - Peter Newmark

25. “I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.” - Harold Bloom

26. “All religions are based on obsolete terminology.” - Vladimir Nabokov

27. “The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted.” - Craig Ferguson

28. “Ihm gefiel nicht das, was er las, sondern eher das Lesen an sich, oder besser gesagt, der Prozess des Lesens selbst, wo sich da doch immerzu aus den Buchstaben irgendein Wort ergibt, das manchmal weiß der Teufel was bedeutet. Dieses Lesen wurde gemeinhin im Vorraum auf dem Bett im liegenden Zustand vollzogen, auf der Matratze, die infolge dieses Umstands so hart und fest wie ein Fladen geworden war.” - Nikolai Gogol

29. “¡Dios bendiga los tiempos antiguos, en que existían cosas raras...!” - Knut Hamsun

30. “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

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

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

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

34. “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

35. “A translator, caught in the space between two tongues. Such people tend to come a little bit unglued from the task of trying to convey meaning from one code to the other. The transfer is never safe, the meaning changes in the channel — becomes tinted, adulterated, absurd, stronger.” - Elena Mauli Shapiro

36. “Translation is the art of failure.” - Umberto Eco

37. “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

38. “As long as human beings speak different languages, the need for translation will continue.” - Nataly Kelly

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

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

41. “Not everyone who knows how to write can be a writer. Not everyone who knows two languages can be a translator.” - Nataly Kelly

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

43. “Of the 193 recognized countries in the world, only politically isolated North Korea is considered monolingual.” - Nataly Kelly

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

45. “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

46. “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