Literary Translation Quotes

Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.

I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English.

I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.

In the last 1,000 years, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year.

Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness

I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.

It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.

Writer's make national literature, while translators make universal literature.

I worked in a bookstore in Oslo, importing the English-language books.

Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own. . . . It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath.

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.

I have translated Bengali poets such as Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay before. These were published by Hindi and Urdu magazines. But to take on Tagore's work is no easy task.

I went to the Sorbonne in Paris for two years and read all the classics by authors like Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant. I was supposed to read them in French but I cheated and used the English versions instead.

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'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.

I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.

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

Knowing some Greek helped defuse forbidding words - not that I counted much on using them. You'll find only trace elements of this language in the poem.

'The Dante Club' was one of America's most important book clubs, as their Wednesday night meetings ultimately led to our country's first exposure to Dante's poetry on a wide scale.

Variación / Variations El remanso de aire bajo la rama del eco. El remanso del agua bajo fronda de luceros. El remanso de tu boca bajo espesura de besos. * The still waters of the air under the bough of the echo. The still waters of the water under a frond of stars. The still waters of your mouth under a thicket of kisses. Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

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.

One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.

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.

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few, but such as cannot write, translate.