Jim Butcher Quotes

I have an all-Japanese design team, and none of them speak English. So it's often funny and surprising how my ideas end up lost in translation.

The only thing that kept us from going bigger worldwide was the language barrier. All the corn that we did on 'Hee Haw,' it was hard to translate into their slang.

In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

Most of us do not, in fact, read another language, and so when we read a translation, we have no way of knowing what has been changed or added.

Sometimes it can be difficult when you're talking to a journo after the game, saying, 'Yeah mate, I was on the burst.' And then the translator is trying to translate that into Japanese, and apparently there is no actual translation.

Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.

There are words that exist in one language and not in another language. It creates barriers that keep us from understanding each other. I'm often frustrated using words to talk to people.

In my creative films, if there was something, some humorous moment that is lost to a non-Korean speaking audience, I'll be very sad.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

I don't know if my sense of humor goes over Americans' heads.

I couldn't really take a girl from Berlin to live in Leeds. I love it here. I miss the Yorkshire sense of humor and things like bitter and Yorkshire puddings, but I can still get my hands on salt 'n' vinegar crisps.

The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language.

The difficulty that many foreign authors face in having their works translated into English has effects far beyond the United States.

Sometimes Americans don't quite get my sense of humor. My good ol' British sarcasm seems to go over their heads.

Even when well translated. can we really understand what other cultures are talking about?

If I were bombing with my jokes in English, I would go back to France. Maybe do that mime thing.

I can speak Cantonese, but I can't speak about fashion - I learnt all my fashion in Europe, so often, during interviews in Chinese I just don't know the right word - it can be very hard to explain things.

You know it was really hard to do a set, or even to do interviews in English, because in Europe, we always had a translator with us.

I am used to being places where I don't speak the language. What I am not used to is being in a part of a country where few people speak my language. Call it ignorance, arrogance, or what have you, but most places I have visited, I was lucky enough to be able to get by with English.

I translated an Emile Zola book, 'The Belly of Paris,' because I didn't find an existing translation that captured his sense of humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.

Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.

It's always a unique challenge when you're working with somebody where English is their second language.

Hector Torrez, how can you communicate with Enzo Hernandez when he speaks Spanish and you speak Mexican?

In India, whichever language you write in, the possibility of people not understanding irony or not understanding [remains there]. This as a writer is most terrifying!