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The Art, Craft, Modes, and Efficacy of Literary Translation Discussed Through the Ages
 "Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness."
(Dante, 14th Century)
"Translation from one language into another...is like gazing at a Flemish tapestry with the wrong side out."
(Cervantes, 16th Century)
"Poetry cannot be translation."
(Samuel Johnson, 18th Century)
"A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible."
(Victor Hugo, 19th Century)
 "The live Dog better than the Dead Lion."
(E. Fitzgerald, 19th Century)
"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."
(Robert Frost, 20th Century)
"Translation is sin."
(Grant Showerman, 1916)
"You only have to consider how much of the world's literature is translation to see that theoretical objections to translations are empty air."
(George Sampson)
"Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal."
(Paul Valery)
"A good poem shall not be turned into a bad one."
(Rosetti)
"All translation is a compromise--the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic."
(Teo Savory)
"In poetry, the translation must produce an effect comparable to that of the original work."
(A. Cauer)
 "Not to translate word for word, but to preserve the general style and force of the language."
(Cicero, 46 B.C.)
"It is risky to translate those who have given their language much grace and elegance, particularly with a language of less power."
(Montaigne)
"Three types of Translation:
metaphrase = word for word, line or line;
paraphrase = words not so strictly followed as the sense,
which may be amplified but not altered;
and
imitation which may not be translation at all."
(John Dryden)
"All translating seems to me to be simply an attempt to accomplish an impossible task."
(W. Humboldt)
"The language of translation ought never to attract attention to itself."
(J. H. Frere)
"A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one."
(A. Schopenhauer)
"In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy.
A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original."
 (G. Lewes)
"Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed eagle."
(E. Fitzgerald)
"The Translator must recast the original into his own Likeness."
(E. Fitzgerald)
"A translator ought to endeavor not only to say what his author has said, but to say it as he has said it."
(John Conington)
"The first requisite of an English translation is that it be English."
(B. Jowett)
"The genius of the language into which a translation is being made is the first thing to be considered; if the original was readable, the translation must be so too."
(Samuel Butler, 1898)
 "The translation called good has original value as a work of art." (B. Croce)
"The new verses should produce the same effect upon their readers as the originals did upon their contemporaries."
(U. W. Moellendorff)
"The two dangers are over translation and under translation."
(J. Thomson)
"Translation is a mode of self-expression; it springs from a desire to instruct and to enrich literature."
(B. Anderton)
"Translation in no sense can be considered as a substitute for the original."
(R. Nemiah)
 "The period for perfect translation has not yet come; it should come about 1970."
(Alfred Orage, 1922)
"The Faithful Translator will give the letter where possible, but in any case the spirit."
(J. B. Postgate)
"There is no such thing as translation."
(J. May)
"Can we in attempting to translate a work which belongs to a very different tradition do more than read our own conceptions into it?"
(I. A. Richards)
"The taste of an age is reflected in its translations."
(J. Peterson)
"Why do people want to translate?"
(H. Thursfield)
"The best a translation can hope for is to convey something of the impression the poem made upon him."
(Edith Hamilton)
 "Only when we oblige the reader to move within the linguistic habits of the author will there be worthy translation."
(Jose Ortega y Gasset)
"There are three grades of translation evils: 1. errors; 2. slips; 3. willful reshaping"
(Vladimir Nabokov)
"The ideal of translation is this: to make a poem whose form is as seemingly spontaneous as the poem it seeks to translate, and to put into that form the whole wealth of the original conception."
(H. Bell)
"Ideal translation would be that which, when reversed, would produce the original text."
(C. Michaud)
"Translation does not usually create great works; but it often helps great works to be created."
(G. Highet)
"In translation language facility is not enough; blood and sweat are the secret."
(Samuel Putnam)
 "The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated."
(Mark Van Doren)
"Verse translation is an interpretive art."
(Paul Manchester)
"Translation distortion is caused by differences in meaning, in syntactical context, and in cultural context."
(Susan Ervin)
"It is not the principles of translating that need readjusting; but rather our ideas about them."
(J. MacFarlane)
"One must be wary of `translatorese'--a queer language that counts words but misses their living force."
(John Ciardi)
"Poetic translation is the transmigration of poetic souls from one language into another."
(J. Rosenberg)
"Mechanized translation is a travesty for poetry and useful only infrequently for scientific texts."
(Y. Bar-Hillel)
"A good translation must succeed first of all as a poem itself."
"A good translator must enter the poet's world without leaving his own, return to his own without leaving the poet's world behind."
(F. Fredericks)
"The translator, even the novice, is not working in isolation. Inevitably he or she re-enacts to a large extent, if not necessarily in the same chronological sequence, the historical evolution of translation."
(Daniel Weissbort)
"Even the simplest word can never be rendered with its exact equivalent into another language."
(Kimon Friar)
"The poet cannot hope to present his vision intact just as a translator can not hope to present the poet's work unaltered."
 (Kimon Friar)
"Translation does not, for him (referring to Ezra Pound), differ in essence from any other poetic job: as the poet begins by seeing, so the translator by reading; but his reading must be a kind of seeing."
(Hugh Kenner)
"The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase."
(Vladimir Nabokov)
"The ideal translator, as we all know well, is not engaged in matching the words of a text with the words of his own language. He is hardly even a proxy, but rather an all out advocate. His job is one of the most extreme examples of special pleading. So the prime criterion of successful poetic translation is assumability. Does it get across to the jury?"
(Kenneth Rexroth)
"It seems to me that we may compare the work of a translator with that of an artist who is asked to create an exact replica of a marble statue, but who cannot secure any marble. He may find some other stone or some wood, or he may have to model in clay or work in bronze, or he may have to use a brush or a pencil and a sheet of paper. Whatever his material, is he is a good craftsman, his work may be good, even great. It may even surpass the original, but it will never be what he set out to produce, an exact replica of the original."
(Wermer Winter)
"The compelling reason for translation is the hope of producing a classic of translation, a work more nearly worthy of its great original than any of its predecessors. Translators by the dozen are ready to rise to this lure. The reason is simple enough. A translator's most essential business, and his most exciting activity, is a traffic in meaning. A moment comes in the translation of any important passage in any significant book when the author's intent hangs naked in the translator's mind. It has shed its original clothes and has not yet found new ones. The translator, like Edna St.Vincent Millay's Euclid, looks on meaning bare."
(Denver Lindley)
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