Jenova Chen Quotes

I have an all-Japanese design team, and none of them speak English. So it's often funny and surprising how my ideas end up lost in translation.

Even when well translated. can we really understand what other cultures are talking about?

There's inherent cultural imbalance whenever you're translating from Chinese to English. Educated Chinese readers are expected not only to know about all the Chinese references - history, language, culture, all this stuff - but to be well-versed in Western references as well.

In India, whichever language you write in, the possibility of people not understanding irony or not understanding [remains there]. This as a writer is most terrifying!

Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.

Some words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.

The only thing that kept us from going bigger worldwide was the language barrier. All the corn that we did on 'Hee Haw,' it was hard to translate into their slang.

In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.

The barrier of communication is terrible if you don't speak the language. You cannot reach a player with a translator.

There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity.

One of the things I tend to do is open myself up to a variety of voices. I try to expose myself to the kind of culture shock that occurs when you talk to people who speak a different language.

INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

There are, for example, so many kinds of tongues in this world; and none is without voice. If then I know not the power of the voice, I shall be to him to whom I speak a barbarian; and he that speaketh, a barbarian to me.

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

My grandmother died in 1991 and I was born in '86. We only met once, but I didn't speak English and she didn't speak Spanish - so we had a communication problem.

The only problem was that I couldn't communicate with Dario. He speaks Italian and I don't. We had a translator the whole time. I just felt that something was lost with the go between. He was a delightful man, but I wish we could have spoken the same language.

There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you're bound to understand and like everything that we do. And of course you don't.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language.

For people to understand me when I travel, I speak with my hands.

In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can't help you either. Nothing makes any sense. They're very polite, but you feel like a joke is being played on you the entire time you're there.

Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish.

'The Lair of the White Worm' is quite a strange film. It's difficult to be good when you're saying lines that have been translated from Spanish to English by someone who speaks French.

I've had fans coming up to me and speaking Chinese or Japanese. It's not a case of mistaken nationality. I just don't think they realise that we don't all speak the same language.

I have some English words on the first album, but any time I try to do it, you miss something. You think it's just a simple translation from French to English, but it's so different as far as the understanding.