Translation Theory Quotes

“There exists a chance of every poem getting changed while reaching every reader. This ‘getting changed’ is a form of ‘getting translated’, in a way. So, every assimilation of any poem is a translation.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“This is the ongoing debate of our field...He argued there were two options: either the translator leaves the author in peace and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace and moves the author towards him....

Which seems right to you? Do we try our hardest, as translators, to render ourselves invisible? Or do we remind our reader that what they are reading was not written in their native language?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Translation is another name for the human condition.”
― David Bellos

“If we expect translation to reproduce the totality of the semantics and affective uses of the original text, then we believe that translation must be loyal to the seminal language system, rather than letting the discourse travel and undertake the adventure of discovering - or creating - a new set of meaning according to the politics of the translation itself. Rigid loyalty to the original in the translated version was, in effect, the intentionality of the translation of the doctrines and precepts that constituted the colonial discourse.”
― Hector Dominguez Ruvalcaba, Translating the Queer: Body Politics and Transnational Conversations

“Translation is often seen as something that anyone who is fluent in two languages can do; one simply reads a text in the source language and somehow comes up with an equivalent text in the target language. Common misconceptions of translation such as this can go as far as to treat it as an art form, a view that chooses to ignore the fact that art also requires extensive training and deep knowledge of methods and techniques. It only takes a few minutes of trying to translate a text to make one realize that such views could not be further from the truth. Translation, as we will see in this book, is a complex process that follows a scientific method, whereby we analyze the source text to determine its communicative functions; to identify functional equivalence problems; to apply translation strategies to generate target language candidates, or hypotheses; and to finally test them to assess their validity.”
― Mustafa Mughazy, The Georgetown Guide to Arabic-English Translation

“Kaynak metne (metnin diline, ait olduğu kültüre) bağlı kalmak ile çeviri metnin dilinin ve ait olduğu kültürün gereklerine, okurun beklentilerine bağlı kalmak kutupları arasında denge bulmaktan söz eden adaylar aslında, bize göre, gerçek sadakatin koşullarını dile getiriyorlar çünkü sadakatin yalnızca kaynak metne bağlılığı kapsayan tek kutuplu bir kavran olmaması gerekir. Böylesi ancak biçimsel, mekanik bir benzerlik olabilir, metnin algılanmasını engelleyebilir. Çevirinin erek kültürde okunan, anlaşılan, anlamı ve işlevi olan, hele tat veren, sonuçta da kaynak metni temsil eden bir şiir haline gelebilmesi, ikinci kutbun gereklerine uymasına bağlı.”
― Ülker İnce, Kızılcık Karpuz Olur mu Hiç? İlahi Çevirmen!

“Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. They story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God's one), only that "our languages are confused." That has always meant that, say, any German philosopher could know exactly what the Chinese people were thinking, only that he couldn't understand them. So instead of learning the foreign language, he demanded a translation.”
― Thorsten J. Pattberg

“Literary translations construct cultural bridges and enlarge our horizons.”
― Núria Añó

“To put the point in a different way, the only truly original text is one that has never been read.”
― Dennis Washburn, The Tale of Genji by Shikibu Murasaki, dennis washburn