Gregory Rabassa famous quotes

A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Quality #Language #Equal

Every act of communication is an act of translation.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Communication #Translations

A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Reading #Language #Unchanging

I have always maintained that translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text. The translator cannot ignore "lesser" words, but must consider every jot and tittle.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Reading #Giving #Language

Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing, which makes it so difficult in this age of fervent belief and ideology, this age or greed and screed.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Greed #Age #Crafts

One of my favorite tricks was taking a page and having the first student translate it from English into whatever language he or she was working on, and the next one would translate it back into English and then into the foreign language, and we'd go around the room and compare the two English versions at the end, and it would be amazing how much survived.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Two #Would Be #Pages

Teaching translation is more of an editing job. You act as editor. But you can have fun with it.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Jobs #Fun #Teaching

When you hear Portuguese, if you're listening fleetingly, it's as if you're hearing Russian, which never happens with Spanish. Because the Portuguese and the Russians share the open vowels and the dark "L," the "owL" sound.
-- Gregory Rabassa

#Dark #Owl #Listening

You have confidence in yourself, which is valuable, if not an indispensable quality.

All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.

I want to express the utmost intensity of the color, bring out the quality, make it expressive.

Have you noticed, with whatever quality of love you have experienced, that when true love arises, it opens up both your mind and emotions? It's an openness to whatever is happening.

Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.

I gravitate toward the larger worldview questions such as, Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What does it mean to know another person? To love someone? Of course, those questions are sort of in the background as I'm playing with language in the foreground, but those are the informing questions.

Act averse to nasty language and partial to fruity tea.

When a monkey nibbles on a weenis, it's funny in any language.

Whoever comes to me, will be free and equal, because I am FREEDOM.

If we are truly created equal then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well