237 Quotes About Translation

Ken Schles: … In one sense we’re all translators living in that “utmost untransparent darkness” (quoting Joao Guimaraes Rosa). And it’s our special responsibility to illuminate the world for ourselves, yes: because we need to know and experience the world first to understand it. but more importantly: We need to translate it for each other, to help each other stumble though it. Maybe even to be sometimes amazed by it.

Only in thoughtful dialogue with what it says can this fragment of thinking be translated. However, thinking is poetizing, and indeed more than one kind of poetizing, more than poetry and song.

Translating from #cat is easy - you just ignore everything, then you decide what you want it to have said, thought, or wanted.

All religions are based on obsolete terminology.

To be sure, all translation is interpretation. ... Be that as it may, functional-equivalence translations, which presume that ambiguity, multivalence, and contradiction are by definition not part of the Bible, take far more creative and interpretive license than formal ones in eradicating those features. In so doing, they too often try to make the Bible into something it's not.

I have heard some amid the world's 'progressive' movements declare that Jesus is not a Christian. To serve a christ who is not a Christian seems more of a personal admission: it is to say that he is a hypocrite and does not follow his own teachings. While the debate as to what it truly entails continues for many, to be a Christian is merely roughly translated as being a follower of Christ.

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted.

Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter.