Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.
The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.
A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text.
My most interesting correspondence is with my translators. I marvel at their sensitivity over certain passages that just anyone, even if he knows German well, would not appreciate.
If I make a speech, I need a translator. But music does not need a translation. People understand me through the sound. That I think is very important. This is just one planet, like one family.
The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!
Of course we may have any number of translations of a given text - the more the better, really.
Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.
A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.
I want to go to a country where I don't speak the language. I want to be lost in translation.