Translators Quotes
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The language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.
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The translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole.
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It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.
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Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.
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When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.
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I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.
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Boys! Are they always this impossible? Do they always say cryptic, indecipherable things? (Note to self: work with Liz to adapt her boy-to-English translator into a more mobile form—like maybe a watch or necklace.)
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I worked with two young women translators. One died and the other received a death threat from the Taliban.
