“As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier.”

The Translator As Reader, p. 276.
A History of Reading (1996)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier." by Alberto Manguel?
Alberto Manguel photo
Alberto Manguel 63
writer 1948

Related quotes

“All meaning is intertextual. No text is complete or autonomous in itself; it needs to be read, and it is read, in relation to other texts.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 35

“We are constantly reading and listening to, writing and speaking, this text in the context of and against the background of other texts and other discourses.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 10

Bernard Lewis photo

“The surest test of one's understanding of a text in another language is translating it into one's own.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, From Babel to Dragomans (2004)

Jacques Derrida photo

“"There is no outside-text." It is usually mistranslated as "There is nothing outside the text" by his opponents to make it appear that Derrida is claiming nothing exists beyond language (see Searle–Derrida debate). In French, that mistranslated phrase would actually read "Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte."”

il n'y a pas de hors-texte
"This question is therefore not only of Rousseau's writing but also of our reading. ...the writer writes <i>in</i> a language and <i>in</i> a logic whose proper system, laws, and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely. ...reading... cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it... . <i>There is nothing outside of the text </i>[there is no outside-text; <i>il n'y a pas de hors-texte</i>]."
Specters of Marx (1993), 1960s

Angelique Rockas photo

“English translation of the Spanish language text.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

Vogue, Mexico Interview: Una Actirz Multiplicada (July 1992)

Northrop Frye photo

“We read (experience) a text linearly, forgetting most of it while we read; then we study it as a simultaneous unit.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 325

Roland Barthes photo
Emanuel Tov photo

“All arguments based on the unequal status of texts are questionable. In principle, all ancient readings have an equal status, without relation to the text or translation in which they are found.”

Emanuel Tov (1941) Israeli biblical scholar and linguist

Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012), p.272

Northrop Frye photo

“Yesterday's kook book becomes tomorrow's standard text.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

2:495
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

Related topics