Alessandra Bottazzin

Pictures rule, but words define, explain, express, direct, and hold together our thoughts and what we know. They lead us into new ideas and back to older ones. In the beginning was the Word.

Don Watson

The translator’s task is much harder than that of the original author. For the original author to express his experience or thought, he has many words available in his own language and he can choose one of those words easily. But the translator has to opt for the nearest equivalent, taking into consideration the probable thoughts of the author, the probable thoughts of the author’s readers and of his own readers and the period of history in which the original author lived.

Theodore Savory, The Art of Translation, 1968

La traduzione è come una donna. Se è bella non è fedele. Se è fedele, certamente non è bella.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko [trad.]

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

Ezra Pound

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

All translation is a compromise – the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic.

Benjamin Jowett

Une langue ne se fixe pas. L’esprit humain est toujours en marche, ou, si l’on veut, en mouvement, et les langues avec lui.

Victor Hugo

Language is an archeological vehicle. The language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

Russell Hoban

To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.

Paul Goodman, Five Years: Thoughts During a Useless Time, 1969

In its communicative function, language is a set of tools with which we attempt to guide another mind to create within itself a mental representation that approximates the one we have.

Scott DeLancey

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied.

Noam Chomsky

Le langage est une peau : je frotte mon langage contre l’autre. C’est comme si j’avais des mots en guise de doigts, ou des doigts au bout de mes mots. Mon langage tremble de désir.

Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux, 1977

Translators have to prove to themselves as to others that they are in control of what they do; that they do not just translate well because they have a “flair” for translation, but rather because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to understand various aspects of their work.

Mona Baker, In Other Words, 1992

Un giovane che voglia avere davanti a sé una ragionevole porzione di futuro dovrebbe dominare (dico “dominare”, non balbettare) almeno tre livelli linguistici: il dialetto locale, quando c’è; la lingua nazionale; una lingua straniera.

C. Augias, Leggere

El lector ideal es un traductor. Es capaz de desmenuzar un texto, retirarle la piel, cortarlo hasta la médula, seguir cada arteria y cada vena y luego poner en pie a un nuevo ser viviente.

Alberto Manguel

The art and craft of translation may be turned to any account, but in principle it is a noble and truth seeking profession, reflecting true statements or life-enhancing images through another language in another culture.

Peter Newmark

Translation quality assessment proceeds according to the lordly, completely unexplained, whimsy of “It doesn’t sound right”.

Peter Fawcett

Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.

Anthony Burgess

Many critics, no defenders,
translators have but two regrets:
when we hit, no one remembers,
when we miss, no one forgets.

Anonymous

Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865

Questo deve fare il perfetto traduttore; senza sviarsi né a destra né a sinistra deve trovare la ragione espressiva della propria fatica; la sua personalità non si annulla perché non può, ma si fa trasparente, si riduce come una parete di cristallo che lascia vedere senza deformazioni ciò che sta dall’altra parte, ma che con il suo spessore mantiene separati gli ambienti.

Benvenuto Terracini, Il problema della traduzione, 1983

Les traducteurs sont comme les peintres de portraits ; ils peuvent embellir la copie, mais elle doit toujours ressembler à l’original.

Élie-Catherine Fréron

Anche tradurre è, come far musica e poesia, come dipingere un quadro e scolpire una statua, sforzo e anelito di conquistare e di possedere la propria realtà.

Manara Valgimigli

Altro è interpretare, altro è tradurre: interpretare è analisi, tradurre è sintesi. Chi interpreta guarda al particolare in sé; chi traduce lo vede nei suoi rapporti con il rimanente.

Manara Valgimigli

Tradurre è anzitutto comprendere, ma non è poi semplicemente riprodurre quanto si è compreso.

Benvenuto Terracini, Il problema della traduzione, 1983

A thing well said will be wit in all languages.

John Dryden, Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 1668