Italo Calvino Quotes

Getting access to diverse civilizations should be easy, and languages are the gateway to 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.

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

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

England is very interested as well, and other countries if I could speak the languages!

I went to a basic school, which had children from all corners of the world, and met my best friend and had to learn Greek because she didn't speak English.

It's fascinating when you're from another place, but you don't speak the language.

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.

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

When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.

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

Globalize yourself!

Americans' scandalous incompetence in foreign languages also explains our dangerously inadequate understanding of world affairs.

I can speak passable Mandarin. I will not be translating at the U.N. anytime soon.

I worked at a job where 90 percent of my coworkers were Spanish-speaking, and some of them were only Spanish-speaking. My rule was if someone came into the office needing something - I worked in HR at the time - they had to bring a Spanish word to teach me. That was the deal.

It has to be said that one of the most impressive aspects of the parliament are the brilliant unsung translators, who ensure that whatever language you speak, you are understood.

I'm inspired by many artists whose language I don't understand.

Little things like that when you go to another country is so welcoming. You meet someone, they're so jolly, they speak the language, it really helps.

Language should not be a barrier for an actor; I want the world to see my work and not limit it to Hindi-speaking audiences.

It's just nice to be able to communicate and be able to identify with a lot of different cultures. I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn't have been able to meet.

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English.

Our leaders increasingly see fit to lecture the ethnic minorities on the need to integrate, including of course the need to speak English. What about the need, though, for Britain to integrate with the rest of the world?

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

He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I was living at the time, and he was translating for a doctor who had a number of Russian patients. On my way home, after running into him, I just heard this phrase in my head.

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.