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

Anthony Burgess

• Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

• Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the original.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

• Translation is at best an echo.

George Borrow

• The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Peter Fawcett

• Translators live off the differences between languages, all the while working toward eliminating them.

Edmond Cary

• Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.

Yevgeny Yevtoushenko

• Many critics, no defenders,

translators have but two regrets:

when we hit, no one remembers,

when we miss, no one forgets.

Anonymous author