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Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn't occur to people - or that a translation could be bad, very bad, and unfaithful to the original.
Lydia Davis
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Lydia Davis
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 15
Linguist
Novelist
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Northampton
Massachusetts
Doesn
Occur
Ideas
Text
People
Originals
Range
Original
Wide
Unfaithful
Idea
Translation
Often
Translations
More quotes by Lydia Davis
I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary.
Lydia Davis
I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!
Lydia Davis
As the writer, I may choose to ignore the emotional heart of the matter, and focus on details, and trust that the heart of the matter will be conveyed nevertheless.
Lydia Davis
To be simple, I would say a story has to have a bit of narrative, if only she says, and then enough of a creation of a different time and place to transport the reader.
Lydia Davis
Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.
Lydia Davis
I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating 'Swann's Way.' There were two reasons. I had almost no time to do my own writing, but didn't want to stop. And it was a reaction to Proust's very long sentences.
Lydia Davis
Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I'm going on. You need at least two brains to write.
Lydia Davis
No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.
Lydia Davis
Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank.
Lydia Davis
I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.
Lydia Davis
That's the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard and pay attention you can do a good job of it.
Lydia Davis
I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.
Lydia Davis
I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, and I don’t like to knock other writers as a matter of principle.
Lydia Davis
I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.
Lydia Davis
The moment when a limit is reached, when there is nothing ahead but darkness: something comes in to help that is not real. Another way all this is like madness: a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.
Lydia Davis
In some sense the text and the translator are locked in struggle - 'I attacked that sentence, it resisted me, I attacked another, it eluded me' - a struggle in which, curiously, when the translator wins, the text wins too.
Lydia Davis
I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.
Lydia Davis
But it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it.
Lydia Davis
I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc.
Lydia Davis
I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.
Lydia Davis
