Translators Quotes

1. "You don't find strangers declaring themselves to you awkward?' But then she wouldn't, would she? People must fall in love with her hourly. She must keep a staff of translators to interpret the proposals of love and marriage.'It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying,' Roxane said."
Author: Ann Patchett

2. "I joined a organisation called Wycliffe Bible Translators that had the objective of translating the Bible into all the languages of the world, and to do that you had to study linguistics, and so that was my initial exposure to linguistics."
Author: Daniel Everett

3. "The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance."
Author: Dexter Filkins

4. "Intrinsic to the concept of a translator's fidelity to the effect and impact of the original is making the second version of the work as close to the first writer's intention as possible. A good translator's devotion to that goal is unwavering. But what never should be forgotten or overlooked is the obvious fact that what we read in a translation is the translator's writing. The inspiration is the original work, certainly, and thoughtful literary translators approach that work with great deference and respect, but the execution of the book in another language is the task of the translator, and that work should be judged and evaluated on its own terms. Still, most reviewers do not acknowledge the fact of translation except in the most perfunctory way, and a significant majority seem incapable of shedding light on the value of the translation or on how it reflects or illuminates the original."
Author: Edith Grossman

5. "Music Doesn't Need Interpreters and Translators"
Author: Ellen J. Barrier

6. "Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they're no good."
Author: Etgar Keret

7. "Andrew Moraviscik, one of the best American scholars of Europe, points out that once you exclude translators and clerical workers, the European Commission employs 2.500 officials, "fewer than any moderately sized European city and less than 1 percent of the number employed by the French state alone". As for its undemocratic nature, any new law it wishes to pass needs more than 71 percent of the weighted national-government votes - "a larger proportion than the required to amend the American Constitution"."
Author: Fareed Zakaria

8. "He wonders again if the dead need translators; perhaps in a moment, in a simple twist of unbecoming, they know everything they need to know."
Author: Hilary Mantel

9. "We are all mediators, translators."
Author: Jacques Derrida

10. "He'd shot and beaten people because he couldn't talk to them.Violence was the only language nobody could understand. There were no translators."
Author: James Meek

11. "God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice."
Author: John Donne

12. "The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it."
Author: Jonathan Coe

13. "Nowadays we are fond of literal translations...That would have seemed a crime to translators in ages past...They wanted to prove that the vernacular was as capable of a great poem as the original."
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

14. "I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself."
Author: Michael Cunningham

15. "Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?"
Author: Nataly Kelly

16. "Translators are the shadow heroes of literature."
Author: Paul Auster

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