Translator Quotes (page 2)
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And maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much. But maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up. Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well. And you call me up again just to break me like a promise. So casually cruel in the name of being honest. I'm a crumpled up piece of paper lying here'Cause I remember it all, all, all too well
Taylor Swift
We're pupils of the religions—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish . . . Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short—here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, “He knits a nice sentence!” Me, I say, “It's unreadable.” They say, “What magnificent theatrical language!” I...
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
What we see, we seeand seeing is changingthe light that shrivels a mountainand leaves a man alive. Heartbeat of the pulsarheart sweating through my body. The radio impulsepouring in from Taurus I am bombarded yet I stand. I have been standing all my life in thedirect path of a battery of signalsthe most accurately transmitted mostuntranslatable language of the universe. I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-luted that a light wave could take 15years to travel through me And...
Adrienne Rich
The Little Mute Boy. The little boy was looking for his voice.(The king of the crickets had it.)In a drop of waterthe little boy was looking for his voice. I do not want it for speaking with; I will make a ring of itso that he may wear my silenceon his little finger. In a drop of waterthe little boy was looking for his voice.(The captive voice, far away, put on a cricket's clothes.)Translated by William S. Merwin
Federico Garcia Lorca
Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blas ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the...
Charles Baudelaire
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Charles Spurgeon