Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second.
Interpretation
Translation alters the original text and can undermine the author's intent.
In this quote, Lawrence Venuti reflects on the complex nature of translation, suggesting that it is not merely a transfer of words from one language to another but rather a transformation that can lead to a distortion of the original author's ideas and voice. He warns that through the act of translating, the translator may assert their own authority, ultimately overshadowing the original work and its cultural nuances.
In practice
In a lecture on the impact of translation, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of preserving the original voice of authors.
Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures.
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
I want to do what I can lend my talents to, but I want it to be as a human being and not as a two-dimensional character.
Monet's garden must be included with his works, because he combined the magic of an adaptation of nature with the work of a painter of light. An extension of the studio into the openair, with color tones lavishly spread out on all sides to exercise the eye with seductive vibrations, from which a feverishly aroused retina expects unquenchable joy.
To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.
I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.
My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.
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