Translation Quality Quotes

When a translation is very good, it is fascinating to see how the book changes and yet stays the same. I think 'Out Stealing Horses' sounds more American for Americans than it does in Norway, and still, it is all there, everything that I wrote. It's amazing.

I wasn't happy with Tagore's own translations in English. Maybe he was, but I wasn't, so I took it upon myself to do it.

The existence of another, competing translation is a good thing, in general, and only immediately discouraging to one person - the translator who, after one, two, or three years of more or less careful work, sees another, and perhaps superior, version appear as if overnight.

Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn't occur to people - or that a translation could be bad, very bad, and unfaithful to the original.

I read pretty well in French and Spanish. I don't want to read a book written in French or Spanish in translation.

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.

'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded.

You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman: she is either beautiful or faithful.

I have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well... English has fallen short.

If anyone does not like my tranlations, they can ignore them

Most of us do not, in fact, read another language, and so when we read a translation, we have no way of knowing what has been changed or added.

I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text.

A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.

Even though I believe a superlative translation can achieve timelessness, that doesn't mean I think other translators shouldn't attempt other versions. The more the better, in the end.

Though I have seldom done anything to my own satisfaction, I am better satisfied with the translation of the New Testament than I ever expected to be. The language is, I believe, simple, plain, intelligible; and I have endeavored, I hope successfully, to make every sentence a faithful representation of the original.

And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.

True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

To be frank: the translations that often sound bad in the mouths of the actors, these have often been done by linguists.

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

Meaning can be usually be approximated, but often by sacrificing style. When I review my translations into Spanish, that's what I'm most concerned with, reading the sentences aloud in Spanish to make sure they sound the way I want them to. To be honest, I much prefer being translated into Greek or Japanese; in those cases, you have no way of being involved, and no pressure.

I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much.

I was very lucky. I don't know German, or Dutch, or Chinese, or Thai. I don't know them, so I can't judge, so I have to go on the word of the publisher that it's a good translation.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.