Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Meanings are translatable. Words are untranslatable… More briefly – a word is translatable, its sound is not.

The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.

The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.

What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.

We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works.

The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.

I write in a slangy colloquial speech that has not been common in the Israeli tradition of writing, and that is one of the things that gets lost a little in translation.

I think Shakespeare is like a dialect. If I heard a broad Scots accent, I'd probably struggle at first but then I'd start to look for words I recognise and I'd get the gist. I think Shakespeare is like that.

The only problem was that I couldn't communicate with Dario. He speaks Italian and I don't. We had a translator the whole time. I just felt that something was lost with the go between. He was a delightful man, but I wish we could have spoken the same language.

Yes, translation is by definition an inadequate substitute for being able to read a masterpiece in the original.

When I was taught Shakespeare in school, it was such an alien, sanitized puzzle, it made no sense.

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

I did not think I would be able to do myself justice if I had to speak to the players in English. I would not be able to get my emotions and feelings across.

I do rap and speak in Malayalam but only to save my life as my vocabulary in the language is not as good as it is in Hindi.

Art and cinema is not restricted to any language.

The poetry of India can be truly known only through scanning the poetry of all languages.

Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican.

With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.

In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

You cannot sing African music in proper English

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.

Sometimes I want to joke but my English isn't perfect. Sometimes people are wondering what I'm talking about.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

To me, when one is writing sometimes about a very specific subject with very specific people, I feel like if that story doesn't cross over, it's not working. That's very beautiful to me, to be sitting in Berlin and there's an actor reading my book in German. I don't even know what's going on, except I know to feel my own rhythms in another language and say, "If this is going well, I think everyone should laugh around now." Then maybe there's laughter, and for me, it reminds me of how story can move around the world.

Languages are fluffy big pillows stuffed between nations - what others say is muffled and nearly lost in them, and when we speak their grammar we get feathers in our mouth. It's worth it. What pleasure to phrase an idea, even in child's words, slowly, and sail it across the gulf in another language to a different-speaking human being!