Xu Yuanchong (1921) Translator of Chinese poetry
"New Translation Theories of the New Age" http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-ZGFY200003000.htm, Chinese Translators Journal, 2000, issue 3, p. 2
“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.”
Gems of Chinese Literature, Preface to the first edition (dated 16 October 1883)
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Herbert Giles7
British sinologist and diplomat 1845–1935Related quotes
Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director
"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text
“Wine is sunlight, held together by water.”
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer
His description of wine, as quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) by Stillman Drake, p. 5
Other quotes
Variant: Light held together by moisture.
“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.
Media Kashigar (1956–2017) Iranian translator, writer and poet
Source: The best critic of a translation is its second translation, Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2013 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/3001
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.
Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter
version in original Dutch / citaat van Matthijs Maris, in het Nederlands: mijn was een geboren schilder which means, hij had er plezier in.
Quote of Matthijs c. 1890; in Jacob Maris (1837-1899), M. van Heteren and others; as cited in 'Ik denk in mijn materie', in exhibition catalog of Teylers Museum / Museum Jan Cunen), Zwolle 2003, p. 29
his remark shortly after Jacob's death, from London where Matthijs lived for many years
Media Kashigar (1956–2017) Iranian translator, writer and poet
Source: The best critic of a translation is its second translation, Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2013 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/3001
