Translation Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old translation quotes, translation sayings, and translation proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness. Edwin Booth
Honest translations were mythical beasts. Robert Reed
The best thing on translation was said by Cervantes: translation is the other side of a tapestry. Leonardo Sciascia
If you want to produce a vital translation, at some point in the translation process you have to forget the original. Some would say you have to kill it. Ideally by eating it alive. Peter Cole
Translation is a notoriously thankless profession: there is absolutely no money in it; it involves a severe submersion of the self into another; the hours are long and you get about as much recognition for your efforts as the telephone repairman. Alma Guillermoprieto
Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Translation is one of the few human activities where the impossible occurs by principle. Mariano Antolín Rato
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation. George Eliot

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