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Quote by Walter Benjamin
Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function c

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information — hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. – Walter Benjamin

Other quotes by Walter Benjamin

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. – Walter Benjamin

Category:
Past, the
Author
Walter Benjamin
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Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know. – Walter Benjamin

Category:
Opinion
Author
Walter Benjamin
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Other Quotes from
Translation
category

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable — any real insight or broad human sentiment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Category:
Translation

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings. – Boris Pasternak

Category:
Translation

The test of a given phrase would be: Is it worthy to be immortal? To make a beeline for something. Thats worthy of being immortal and is immortal in English idiom. I guess Ill split is not going to be immortal and is excludable, therefore excluded. – Robert Fitzgerald

Category:
Translation

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation. – Sir John Denham

Category:
Translation

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Unemployment is capitalisms way of getting you to plant a garden. – Orson Scott Card

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There is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner. – P. J. ORourke

Category:
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In politics it is necessary either to betray ones country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate. – Charles de Gaulle

Category:
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Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical. – Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Category:
Labor