Quotes & Sayings About Translating Poetry

Reconstructing the past is rather like translating poetry. It can be done, but never exactly. — Norman Davies

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice. — James Buchan

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went. — Paul Auster

You scour these Chinatowns of the mind, translating them
like sutras Xuan Zhang fetched from India, testing ways
return might be possible against these homesick inventions,
trace the traveller's alien steps across borders, and in between
discover how transit has a way of lasting, the way these Chinatowns
grew out of not knowing whether to return or to stay, and then became home. — Boey Kim Cheng

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table. — Paul Auster

I've done a lot of going back and forth with my own writing, in particular translating my English language stuff into Ukrainian - poetry as well as prose. But I actually hate doing it. It is a thankless, mind-numbing process, additionally unpleasant for me because it reminds me of my ambiguous status of not belonging anywhere. — Yuriy Tarnawsky

There was a widespread rumor that there was an attempt to absorb an Arab youth movement into the kibbutz. It seemed that the attempt failed. Perhaps Muhammad and Nazmi were the remnants of that Arab youth movement. They may have belonged to the Arab youth movement pioneers. The movement succeeded in establishing a number of cores, and one of its training groups was in Shomrat. It was not talked about often in the kibbutz, but rumors always reached us, and Mohammed and Nazmi had ties to this movement. Muhammad loved to read Arabic poetry and occasionally enjoyed translating the words into Hebrew for us. It always amazed me how he sat, he never needed a chair. — Nahum Sivan