Ken Liu Quotes

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

My publication, 'The Post,' has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West.

My children speak very good Chinese, and they translate for our American friends.

I believe we don't need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect.

On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.

I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present Christian answers.

Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

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.

Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.

For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.

I never found it frustrating not speaking.

Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors.

I thought that subtitles are boring because they're there generally to serve us with information to make you understand what people are saying in a different language.

I hope the English-speaking world can see that I'm not only an Israeli actress.

The cool thing about doing a voice-over into a different language is that you get to bring the character of your own culture into it.

Honestly, I'm cool with everyone, and people pick up on that. I'd say, 'I'm not gay, but it's all good.' It's kind of like going to Paris when you don't know the language; some Americans get into trouble over there, but I'm just like, 'Sorry, I don't speak French.'

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Many young Japanese were hearing for the first time the words of Native people from the West.

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

Notwithstanding my present incompetency, I am beginning to translate the New Testament, being extremely anxious to get some parts of Scripture, at least, into an intelligible shape, if for no other purpose than to read, as occasion offers, to the Burmans I meet with.

I could never see a book written in a foreign language without the most ardent desire to read it.

The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested.

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

Like many foreign students when they go abroad, I was instantly thrust into a position of having to explain and defend my country. That is a very common predicament.