Quotes about translation
page 11

“Swami Chinmayananda being the first person to have translated the Gita in English, played an important role in propagating this text across the world to all age groups.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Sri Jayendra Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, in Chinmayananda spread the message of `Gita' http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2001-12-25/mumbai/27232673_1_gita-shankaracharya-swami <br class="br">About Chinmayananda

Age, World, Personality

“A word or a form of speech is not good because it is in the dictionary, but is in the dictionary because it was good before it found its way there.”

Francesco Maria Zanotti (1692–1777) Italian philosopher

Una parola o forma di dire non è buona perchè è nel Vocabulario, ma è nel Vocabulario perchè era buona anche prima di esservi.
XIX.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 434.
Paradossi

Way

“He who writes in a rich language is like a man with many suits of clothes, some for home wear, others in which to appear in public, and others for state occasions.”

Francesco Maria Zanotti (1692–1777) Italian philosopher

Chi scrive in una lingua abbondante, è come un uomo che ha molti habiti, altri per usi domestici, altri per prodursi in pubblico, altri per le feste solenni.
XI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 271.
Paradossi

Home, Appearance, Clothes

“Ambassadors are the eyes and ears of States.”

Francesco Sansovino (1521–1583) Italian writer

Gli Ambasciadori sono gli occhi e gli orecchi de gli stati.
CCLXXVI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 305.
Concetti Politici (1578)

“Men have no greater enemy than excessive prosperity, for it destroys their mastery over themselves and makes them licentious and vicious, with a hankering after novelties destructive of their own well-being.”

Francesco Sansovino (1521–1583) Italian writer

Non hanno gli huomini maggior nimico che la troppa prosperità, perchè gli fa impotenti di se medesimi, licentiosi et arditi al male, e cupidi di turbare il ben proprio con cose nuove.
CCLXI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 376.
Concetti Politici (1578)

Men, Making love

“All roads alike may lead us unto Rome.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Tutte le vie ponno condurre a Roma.
Stornelli Politici, "Giammai".
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 242.

“Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence - a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity - with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity. Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potentials in all possible variations - and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 884, Page 138
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)

Love, Making love, Way, Nature

“Your emotions are a translation, informing you at all moments of the day of where you stand energetically in relation to your higher self. When you are preventing the focused energy of your higher self, you quickly develop ailments of all kinds. When you create a lack of that energy flowing through you, you make yourself a match to illness, to accidents, and to absence instead of abundance and health.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Health, Making love, Relation ships, Self-confidence

“Just as Hegel is said to have understood his philosophy for the first time when he read its French translation, Vilfredo Pareto could have learned what it was he meant exactly to say when he read Bergson's 1938 classic.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Introduction to the Enlarged Edition
1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947; 1983)

Learning, Time, Reading

“Life has two wings : one, sorrow; one, delight;
Love gives it pinions, God directs its flight.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 308.
Original: (it) Ha due ali la vita : il gaudio e il duolo;
L’amor la impenna, e Dio dirige il volo.
Original: (it) Stornelli, "Una Vedova ad una Sjéosa".

Love, Life, God, Making love

“Painting does not use language. Abstract painting teaches us this, and this is what gives it its power of expression. If colour does not relate to the feelings of our soul through an external relation but finds its true being in them – as a pure sensation and a pure experience – then it does not even need to translate, through a means, the abstract content of our invisible life. It coincides with our invisible life and is its pathos: its suffering, its boredom, its neglect or its joy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Culture and Barbarism, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988)
Source: Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible: On Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 72

Life, Feeling, Soul, Suffering

“All cultural translation necessitates some interpretation and simplification. No sane reader would be able to make sense of a text which consisted exclusively of directly translated, unmediated quotations from informants. Compression and editing are therefore necessary elements of cultural translation. Moreover, no matter how outstanding an anthropologist is, as a fieldworker, as a writer and as an analyst, the text always represents a selection, and it will always to a greater or lesser extent be marked by the subjectivity of the translator.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Making love, Sense

“Many disasters can be traced to our linguistic shortcomings. Millions of money and multitudes of men have been sacrificed in order to save the prestige of a mistake in translation committed "by authority."”

Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899) British orientalist

Writings of Dr. Leitner, Chapter: Oriental Translations of English Texts, p. 151

Men, Money

“The art of cultural translation consists in oscillating between distance and nearness, between one’s own concepts and the native ones, or – to put it differently – making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Making love, Art

“Winning is everything, but the trick is to know where the winning really is.... We're political animals, Ibram. Through us, if we do our job properly, the black and white of war is tempered. We are the interpreters of combat, the translators. We give meaning to war, subtlety, purpose even. Killing is the most abhorrent, mindless profession known to man. Our role is to fashion the killing machine of the human species into a positive force. For the Emperor's sake. For the sake of our own consciences.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Commissar-General Delane Oktar:
Warhammer 40,000 Works, Gaunt's Ghosts (novel series), First & Only

War, Fashion, Animals

“Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change in decades.”

Hans Rosling book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Source: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Change

“Mastery of content that is measurable, tangible, and translates into respect.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 210

“We [as Latinxs] got to be there representing, explaining, and translating…It’s the only way we are going to have people come together.”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

Heritage and indigenous peoples

People, Way

“Upon the Road the hidden stands revealed. Each sees and knows the villainy of each. (I can find no other word, my brother, to translate the ancient word which designates the unrevealed stupidity, the vileness and crass ignorance, and the self-interest which are distinguishing characteristics of the average aspirant.) And yet there is, with that great revelation, no turning back, no spurning of each other, and no shakiness upon the Road. The Road goes forward into day.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Glamour: A World Problem (1950), The Six Rules of the Path (Rules of the Road)

Stupidity, Self-confidence

“We need to make decisions that make us less consumptive and reduce our reliance on nitrogen. It's like a carbon footprint. But you can reduce your nitrogen footprint. I do it by not eating much meat -- I still like a little every now and then -- not using corn oil, driving a car that I can put nonethanol gas in and get better gas mileage. Just things like that that can make a difference. So I'm challenging, not just you, but I challenge a lot of people, especially in the Midwest -- think about how you're treating your land and how you can make a difference. So my steps are very small steps. To change the type of agriculture in the US is going to be many big steps. And it's going to take political and social will for that to happen. But we can do it. I strongly believe we can translate the science, bridge it to policy and make a difference in our environment. We all want a clean environment.”

Nancy Rabalais Marine biologist

Source: The "dead zone" of the Gulf of Mexico https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_rabalais_the_dead_zone_of_the_gulf_of_mexico (November 2017)

People, Making love, Cars, Thinking

“Do I still need to tell you that I am not guided by selfish motives? No gentlemen, although Belgium is small, it is happy and content with its fate. I have no ambition other than to serve it. In this century, our civilized society imparts unprecedented values to barbarian communities in other parts of the world.
Leopold II, King of the Belgians in a speech at the Brussels Geographic Conference on September 12, 1876. Quoted from the book "Zaïre, Ketens van Koper (translated: Zaire, Chains of Copper)" Chapter 2: From Leopold II to Bwana Kitoko, page 16. Leuven, Kritak Fonds, 1978. ISBN 9063030185”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Fate, Happiness, Books, World

“Nor word for word too faithfully translate.”

Horace Ars Poetica

Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 133 (tr. John Dryden)

“In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Albert Edward Elsen (1985). The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. p. 131
1930s and later

Art, Sincerity

“If, in reading translations, you come across a haiku that does not convey to you any emotion at all, do not blame yourself or the poet. Blame it on the translator!”

Harold Gould Henderson (1889–1974) American art historian

Haiku in English'. Charles E. Tuttle 1967

Reading

“Sanskrit was a complete success and became the language of all cultured people in India and in countries under Indian influence. All scientific, philosophical, historical works were henceforth written in Sanskrit, and important texts existing in other languages were translated and adapted into Sanskrit. For this reason, very few ancient literary, religious, or philosophical documents exits in India in other languages. The sheer volume of Sanskrit literature is immense, and it remains largely unexplored.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou in: Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India https://books.google.co.in/books?id=IMSngEmfdS0C&pg=PA17, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1 August 1993, p. 17.

People, Literature, Success, Country

“Whenever I look at any environmental story, whether it’s oceans, jungles, Antarctica, or the Amazon, I look at the human side to translate it in a relevant way for human beings. It makes it more relevant and compelling to people who are watching, listening, reading.”

Céline Cousteau (1972) French-American explorer, filmmaker, and diver

Amazon ‘Tribes on the Edge’: Q&A with documentary filmmaker Céline Cousteau https://www.thenewleam.com/2021/04/amazon-tribes-on-the-edge-qa-with-documentary-filmmaker-celine-cousteau/ (April 22, 2021)

People, Making love, Way, Reading

“Religion translates metaphysical or universal truths into dogmatic language; now though dogma is not accessible to all men in its intrinsic truth, which can only be directly attained by the Intellect, it is nonetheless accessible through faith, which is, for the great majority, the only possible mode of participation in the Divine Truths. As for intellectual knowledge, which proceeds neither from belief nor from a process of reasoning, it goes beyond dogma in the sense that, without ever contradicting the latter, it penetrates its internal dimension, that is, the infinite Truth that dominates all forms.”

Frithjof Schuon book The Transcendent Unity of Religions

[1993, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Quest Books, xxxi, 978-0-8356-0587-8]
Miscellaneous, Religion

Men, Truth, Faith, Religion

“None but a poet can translate a poet.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Introduction (p. cl)
The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: an Epic Poem (1776)

“My English name is Bowinn Ma, but in Chinese, it’s Ma Bo Wen. Ma literally translates as “horse,” which is the family name, and Bo Wen literally translates to “plentiful script.” But what it means can be roughly translated as “ocean of knowledge” or “broad scholar.””

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

It means someone who has a broad understanding of many things and someone who has the wisdom to use this knowledge in a good way. It represents what my parents and grandparents had hoped I would become as an adult. In English, my name is just a name, a series of sounds used to identify me. But in my traditional language, those two simple syllables are a culmination of all of the hopes and dreams that my family have had of me since my birth — aspirations that could never truly be translated properly across cultures in as succinct a way.
British Columbia Legislative Hansard, March 12, 2018: INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES
Meaning of Name

Family, Knowledge, Horse

“Just as no one is quite so stupid as to nullify biology completely, so too does no one deny some flexibility in the translation of genes into complex behaviors.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

Source: An Urchin in the Storm (1987) "Nurturing Nature", p. 152

Stupidity, Behavior

“Pure Christianity—the Christianity of the catacombs—is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: 14 December 1941, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944

Heart

“It’s frustrating seeing things lost in translation. Some expressions are just so Chinese, or so English, you have to switch your thinking to English in order to write it with spontaneity and naturally.”

Geling Yan (1958) Chinese writer and screenwriter

Source: "Chinese writer finds freedom in English" in Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-literature-yan-interview/chinese-writer-finds-freedom-in-english-idUSTRE53M00D20090423 (22 April 2009)

Nature, Thinking

“Those who translate Pistis by "Faith," are utterly wrong. The word "faith" as grace or something to be believed in through unreasoned or blind faith, is a word that dates only since Christianity.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

Source: The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Faith

“Humanism and Humanitarianism, Liberalism and Internationalism...emerge as a result of a tendency to translate into secular terms certain movements and aspirations which had characterised a Christian civilisation... humanitarianism, for example, is an anaemic substitute for the doctrine of New Testament love.”

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian

Source: Christianity in European History (1951), pp. 40-41

Love

“In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn’t translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Conclusion: The Miyé and the Magaalo (p. 261)
2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

People, World, Food, Color

“To build unity requires recognizing the central role of young activists. They are vigorously fighting the attack on this century's Reconstruction. Their anger at today's ugly society often translates into a passionate drive for unity across color lines.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

Color, Passion, Fight, Anger

“There are so few who have all the talents requisite for translation and… there is so little encouragement for so considerable part of learning.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Learning, Parting

“Music exerts a great power over emotions; it's capable of influencing mood by modifying the body's chemical balance. For who create music, this power translates into a duty towards anyone listens to it.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La musica esercita un grande potere sulle emozioni; è capace di influenzare l'umore modificando l'equilibrio chimico del corpo. Per chi crea musica, questo potere si traduce in un dovere verso chiunque l'ascolti.
Source: prevale.net

Music, Mood

Quotes about translation page 11

Quotes about translation
page 11