Miguel de Unamuno Quotes

Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.

I've done two remakes, 'Rowdy Rathore' and 'Son of Sardaar,' and I see nothing wrong with it. The originals were in a language that not everyone understands, so when you're making it in another language, you can reach a much wider audience. That's how I look at it.

Though most of my titles are translated into about 7 to 8 languages, I feel that translations, to some extent, can lose the flavour of the colloquial words used otherwise in the regional narrative.

The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.

Things can be translated, but they become different.

Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.

You know, words have strange destiny, too. They grow. They get old. They die. They come back.

Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

The language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.

Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.

In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.

Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.

The most difficult task for anyone wandering through a foreign land with the hope of gaining some insight into it is the profound need to come to terms with the lives and thoughts of strangers.

It's always a unique challenge when you're working with somebody where English is their second language.

Verbing weirds language.

It's just nice to be able to communicate and be able to identify with a lot of different cultures. I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn't have been able to meet.

It's no big deal about how you get language to evolve. You cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent things to each other.

The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals; and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.

Language is so different from life. How am I supposed to fit the one into the other? How can I bring them together?

As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.

I never meet a church that wishes they didn't do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn't do it. They will all say, to the person, it's hard. It's difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion as you're trying to go across cultures, and you don't understand, you didn't mean to offend somebody but you've offended somebody. But they will all say it just does something.

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.

Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.