The ideal reader is a translator. He or she can pull a text to pieces, remove its skin, cut it to the bone, follow each artery and vein and thence fashion a new living being.
Translators are the closest readers – the ones who pay the most meticulous attention to every shade of meaning of every word.
Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.
Translating is relaying the foundations without knocking the house down.
A good translator must fully understand the language of the author they are translating, but even more so their own. By this I mean, not only be able to write correctly but also be aware of the subtleties and hidden resources; which is only true for a professional writer. You don’t become a translator overnight.
A good translator must fully understand the language of the author they are translating, but even more so their own, (…) which is only true for a professional writer. You don’t become a translator overnight.
Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.
Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another (…)
On the face of it, we may think of translation as saying the same thing in another language. On closer inspection, we realise that we never say the same thing in two different languages, and decide that it is theoretically impossible to translate. At best, we betray. And yet, there have always been translators. And when they translate, what they are really doing is negotiating, step by step.
On the face of it, we may think of translation as saying the same thing in another language. On closer inspection, we realise that we never say the same thing in two different languages.
A table doesn't mean 'ein Tisch' – when you're learning a new word, you must never say to yourself 'it means'. That's altogether the wrong approach. What you must say to yourself is: Over there in England, they have a thing called a table. We may go to England and look at it and say, 'That's our Tisch.' But it isn't. The resemblance is only on the surface. The two things are essentially different, because they've been thought about differently by two nations with different cultures.
All arguments against translation can be summed up by just one: it is not the original.
The art of translation is a balance of risk and restraint.
Everybody knows that translation isn’t achieved through literal precision, but perhaps we should broaden this view and say that it is better achieved through a musical approach, one that is entirely personal and, if need be, unreasonable. (...) The gravest errors are the musical ones. (...) Is the conventional need to respect meaning a legacy from our school days, denying a text its freedom and preventing it from breathing, from breaking loose?
A literary text is comparable to a multi-string instrument: to translate well, you need to pluck all strings to convey the full harmony of the translated piece. Plucking the meaning string alone plays the melodic line. It doesn’t convey the beauty of the silences concealed between the words. Translating silences means making them heard.
A literary text is comparable to a multi-string instrument: to translate well, you need to pluck all of them to convey the full harmony of the translated piece.
It is fascinating and puzzling to realize that only translation has to fend off the insidious, damaging question of whether or not it is, can be, or should be possible. It would never occur to anyone to ask whether it is feasible for an actor to perform a dramatic role or a musician to interpret a piece of music.
I realized that the translator and the actor had to have the same kind of talent. What they both do is to take something of somebody else’s and put it over as if it were their own. I think you have to have that capacity. So in addition to the technical stunt, there is a psychological workout, which translation involves: something like being on stage.
I realized that the translator and the actor had to have the same kind of talent. What they both do is to take something of somebody else’s and put it over as if it were their own.
There is only one way to faithfully translate an author from a foreign language to our own. That is, being satisfied with the result only when it evokes the same feelings in the soul of the reader.
Translating is finding yourself behind the scenes and suddenly realising that everything is made of cardboard.
The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original.
Translation is adaptation. We do not automatically copy words from a dictionary. Every word and every comma is a decision and a transposition to another context, linguistically as well as socially and culturally.
As a matter of fact, I don’t believe anything can ever be untranslatable – or, moreover, translatable.
The untranslatable is sometimes that which has not yet been translated correctly.
Without translation, we would be living in provinces bordering on silence.
Without translation I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.
The more 'difficult' the text, i.e. resistant by its very nature and complexity, the more [the translator] draws on their own language for the tools to help them overcome this resistance.
The constraints imposed by the presence of a source text empower and enhance the creativity of the translation act by placing the translator in a position of striving to overcome them.
The whole process is like having a language play a game – of flexibility – that it is never naturally prepared for.
Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages.
The translation would not seek to say this or that, to transport this or that content, to communicate some particular charge of meaning, but to re-mark the affinity among the languages, to exhibit its own possibility.
Translating is writing with a partner.
A translation expressed word for word from one language into another conceals the sense just as an overabundant pasture strangles the crops.
Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.
It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
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