George Borrow Quotes

Translation is the art of failure.

I want my words to survive translation.

The problem is that it is difficult to translate.

My mother introduced to me as a child the world of language: the way in which translation can be a system by which you can understand others.

I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.

A common language is a first step towards communication across cultural boundaries.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

Our Japanese fans don't speak English primary. They'll translate a sentence before coming and say something like, 'Thank you for coming to our country.' It's like, you're welcome. Thanks for coming to our show!

I speak to the Spanish players that we have in Spanish.

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican.

Something gets lost when you translate. It's hard to keep straight. Perspective is every thing.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.

I woke up find a rather noisy multi-lingual meeting going on. This was great as everyone could participate and even though everything had to be translated into about four different languages it never became boring. After a while the meeting broke up and everyone went for food.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

I parle Francais like a Spanish cow.

You couldn't have human society without language.

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.

I never found it frustrating not speaking.

I'm not a xenophobe - I think immigration is a good thing for most countries - but they transmute the foibles of their native tongues into English in a way that's difficult to figure out.

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

A different language is a different vision of life.