“As translators, we must be courageous, free and passionate about what we are doing. We must constantly strive to enrich our own cultural and linguistic repertoire. We must read, we must write. We must be prepared to rethink, to revise, to rewrite, constantly. We must have endless time and patience. Deadlines are there to be ignored, to be kept alive. Above all we must play with words, ideas and feelings. Delight in them. We must never lose sight of the playfulness and creative licence that are the lifeblood of art and literature, and hence of translation.”

—  John Minford

Public Lecture (2018)

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John Minford 9
New Zealand sinologist 1946

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“We must never lose sight of the deep and indestructible connections between translation/literature and life. If what we write is to have a chance of living on the page, then we must also live, we must observe life, we must experience and learn to transmute that experience. Translators no less than creative writers.”

John Minford (1946) New Zealand sinologist

Public Lecture (2018)

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“When we do fantasy, we must not lose sight of reality.”

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