Translations

• “Translation of poetry into poetry is difficult, because the translator must give a brilliancy to his language without that warmth of original conception, from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord.”

• “When you offer a translation to a nation, that nation will almost always look at the translation as an act of violence against itself. To translate a foreign writer is to add to your own national poetry; such a widening of the horizon does not please those who profit from it, at least not in the beginning.”

• “Translations [into the German language], even the best ones, proceed from a mistaken premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. ... The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.”

• “Literary translation is not merely an act of picking words from one language and keeping it by dipping in the vessel of another language. Those words need to be rinsed, washed, carved and decorated as much as possible.”

• “A scribe who does not know how to grasp the meaning -- from where will he produce a translation?”

• “How shall men meditate in that which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? [...] Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.