Robert A. Heinlein, in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
“Translated: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
7
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
Also: About what one can not speak, one must remain silent. (7)
Source: 1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
“I need a map of your head, translated into English, so I can learn to not make you frown.”
Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts
“The world cannot be translated; it can only be dreamed of and touched.”
“World II,” p. 84
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Same and Change”
A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)
“The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms.”
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 15
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
Notes from McKennitt's journals in the CD booklet for The Mask and Mirror '
Context: May, 1993 - Stratford... have been reading through the poetry of 15th century Spain, and I find myself drawn to one by the mystic writer and visionary St. John of the Cross; the untitled work is an exquisite, richly metaphoric love poem between himself and his god. It could pass as a love poem between any two at any time... His approach seems more akin to early Islamic or Judaic works in its more direct route to communication to his god... I have gone over three different translations of the poem, and am struck by how much a translation can alter our interpretation. I am reminded that most holy scriptures come to us in translation, resulting in a diversity of views.
As quoted in "Primo Levi and Translation" http://www.leeds.ac.uk/bsis/98/98pltrn.htm by David Mendel http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20070320/ai_n18738601/print, in Bulletin of the Society for Italian Studies (1998)
Context: Translation is difficult work because the barriers between languages are higher than is generally thought … knowing how to avoid the traps is not enough to make a good translator. The task is more arduous; it is a matter of transferring from one language to another the expressive force of the text, and this is a superhuman task, so much so that some celebrated translations (for example that of the Odyssey into Latin and the Bible into German) have marked transformations in the history of our civilisation.
Nonetheless, since writing results from a profound interaction between the creative talent of the writer and the language in which he expresses himself, to each translation is coupled an inevitable loss, comparable to the loss of changing money. This diminution varies in degree, great or small according to the ability of the translator and the nature of the original text. As a rule it is minimal for technical or scientific texts (but in this case the translator, in addition to knowing the two languages, needs to understand what he is translating; possess, that is to say, a third competence). It is maximal for poetry...
