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Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
Joseph Brodsky
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Translation captures the essence of the original work, but cannot replicate its full creativity and nuance.

Joseph Brodsky emphasizes that translation is an interpretive act rather than a process of original creation. While it serves to communicate ideas across language barriers, it inherently involves some loss of meaning, style, and cultural context, reminding us of the challenges involved when conveying thoughts from one language to another.

Themes

TranslationLossCreativityInterpretationLanguage

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the challenges of literary translation during a seminar.

More from Joseph Brodsky

Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
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One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
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On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
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The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
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Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
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To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Joseph BrodskyRead

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