translation
noun
Abbr. tr., trans., transl.
1. a. The act or process of translating,
especially from one language into another. b. The state of being translated.
2. A translated version of a text.
3. Physics. Motion of a body in
which every point of the body moves parallel to and the same distance as
every other point of the body; nonrotational displacement.
4. Biology. The process by which
messenger RNA directs the amino acid sequence of a growing polypeptide
during protein synthesis.
— trans·la¹tion·al adjective
translation (noun)
translation, version, rendering,
free translation, loose rendering
faithful translation, literal translation,
construe
key, crib
pony, trot
rewording, paraphrase, metaphrase
précis, abridgment, epitome, COMPENDIUM
adaptation, simplification, amplification,
INTELLIGIBILITY
transliteration, decoding, decipherment
lip-reading
Translation
To translate, one must have a style
of his own, for the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come
from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences;
they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation
is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust
this to one’s author.
Paul Goodman (1911–72), U.S. author,
poet, critic. Five Years, “Summer 1957, in Europe,” sct. 8 (1966).
Translation is entirely mysterious.
Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating,
or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other
text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep
sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings
them shining into the boat … where in this metaphor they die and get canned
and eaten in sandwiches.
Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), U.S.
author. “Reciprocity of Prose and Poetry,” address, 1983 in Poetry Series,
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (published in Dancing at the
Edge of the World, 1989).
Any translation which intends to
perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence,
something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), German
critic, philosopher. Illuminations, “The Task of the Translator” (1955;
ed. by Hannah Arendt, 1968).
Nor ought a genius less than his
that writ
Attempt translation.
Sir John Denham (1615–69), English
poet. To Sir Richard Fanshaw upon his translation of Pastor Fido. The poem
begins:“Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few but such as
cannot write, translate.”
God employs several translators;
some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some
by justice.
John Donne (c. 1572–1631), English
divine, metaphysical poet. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation
17 (1624).
I do not hesitate to read … all
good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable—any
real insight or broad human sentiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82),
U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Society and Solitude, “Books” (1870).
The test of a given phrase would
be: Is it worthy to be immortal? To “make a beeline” for something. That’s
worthy of being immortal and is immortal in English idiom. “I guess I’ll
split” is not going to be immortal and is excludable, therefore excluded.
Robert Fitzgerald (1910–85), U.S.
scholar, translator. Writers at Work (Eighth Series, ed. by George Plimpton,
1988), on his criteria for translating Homeric Greek. Fitzgerald’s translations
of Homer’s Odyssey and The Iliad appeared in 1961 and 1974.
Poetry is what is lost in translation.
Robert Frost (1874–1963), U.S.
poet. Quoted in: Louis Untermeyer, Robert Frost: a Backward Look, ch. 1
(1964). Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, in Biographia Literaria, ch. 22
(1817): “In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal
of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible,
to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible
test of a blameless style; namely: its untranslatableness in words of the
same language without injury to the meaning.”
Translation is the paradigm, the
exemplar of all writing…. It is translation that demonstrates most vividly
the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech,
that supremely human gift.
Harry Mathews (b. 1930), U.S. novelist.
Country Cooking and Other Stories, “The Dialect of the Tribe” (1980).
As far as modern writing is concerned,
it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy…. Translation
is very much like copying paintings.
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), Russian
poet, novelist, translator. Interview in Writers at Work (Second Series,
ed. by George Plimpton, 1963). “The only interesting sort of translating
is that of classics,” Pasternak believed.
A great age of literature is perhaps
always a great age of translations.
Ezra Pound (1885–1972), U.S. poet,
critic. Egoist (London, Oct. 1917).
The best thing on translation was
said by Cervantes: translation is the other side of a tapestry.
Leonardo Sciascia (1921–89), Italian
writer. Guardian (London, 5 Aug. 1988).
Translators, traitors.
Italian Proverb.
It were as wise to cast a violet
into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour
and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations
of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no
flower—and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822),
English poet. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821; published 1840).
Woe to the makers of literal translations,
who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing
that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.
Voltaire (1694–1778), French philosopher,
author. Letters on England, Letter 18, “On Tragedy” (1732). Earlier in
the essay, Voltaire prefaced a translated extract from Shakepeare (“To
be or not to be”) with the words: “Have pity on the copy for the sake of
the original, and always bear in mind when you see a translation that you
are only looking at a feeble print of a great picture.”
Humour is the first of the gifts
to perish in a foreign tongue.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), British
novelist. The Common Reader, “On Not Knowing Greek” (First Series, 1925).
English
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