“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”

— Jorge Luis Borges , book Other Inquisitions

El original es infiel a la traducción.
Jorge Luis Borges "Sobre el Vathek de William Beckford" (1943), in Otras inquisiciones: 1937-1952 (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1952) p. 163; "About William Beckford's Vathek", in Ruth L. C. Simms (trans.) Other Inquisitions: 1937-1952 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964) p. 140.
On Henley's translation of Vathek.

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El original es infiel a la traducción.

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Jorge Luis Borges 213

Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator… 1899–1986

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“The translator translates a book for the ones who are not familiar with its language of origin. If someone can read it in the language of origin, he will not need to read its translation. So, when you translate, you first suppose that you translate it for someone who does not know its language and could not explore that world and that thought.”

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Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

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short note in Israëls' Journal, 12 Dec. 1903, (in Jan Veth 1903, nr. 6); as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 199
Israëls was citing here Sientje Mesdag-van Houten who was characterizing his work that day; several of Israëls' paintings were present in the collection of Mr and Mrs Mesdag
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“Chance of source language influencing the target language and that of the translator intervening onto the style of original writer are major challenges in literary translation.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

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From Prose

“It must however always be borne in mind that translators are but traitors at the best, and that translations may be moonlight and water while the originals are sunlight and wine.”

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“If the original does not exist for the reader's sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?”

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“When a promise is broken, the promise still remains. In one way or another, we are all unfaithful to each other, and physical unfaithfulness is not the worst kind there is.”

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“On translating text into the new language as it is in source language, there is a chance of it being emerged as an absurd sentence in the target language making no sense at all. In the attempt to make the translation meaningful to the target language, there exists a risk of the original work getting meddled by the translator’s style.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

“Dam Square is the center of movement in our city [Amsterdam]. (translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) De Dam is het middenpunt van beweging in onzen stad [Amsterdam].
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undated quotes

“There is no beginning, no original word: each one is a metaphor for another word which is a metaphor for yet another, and so on. All of them are translations of translations. A transparency in which the obverse is the reverse: fixity is always momentary.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 4
Context: Since movement is a metaphor for change, the best thing will be to say: nonchange is (always) change. It would appear that I have finally arrived at the desired disequilibrium. Nonetheless, change is not the primordial, original word that I am searching for: it is a form of becoming. When becoming is substituted for change, the relation between the two terms is altered, so that I am obliged to replace nonchange by permanence, which is a metaphor for fixity, as becoming is for coming-to-be, which in turn is a metaphor for time in all its ceaseless transformations…. There is no beginning, no original word: each one is a metaphor for another word which is a metaphor for yet another, and so on. All of them are translations of translations. A transparency in which the obverse is the reverse: fixity is always momentary.
I begin all over again: if it does not make sense to say that fixity is always momentary, the same may not be true if I say that it never is.

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”

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Jorge Luis Borges 213

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