To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.
George SteinerRead
Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Languages shape our understanding of the world, and without translation, we limit our communication and connection.
George Steiner's quote emphasizes the importance of translation in bridging cultural and linguistic divides. It suggests that each language represents a unique perspective or 'world', and without the ability to translate, our ability to engage with different cultures diminishes, leaving us in a state of isolation akin to silence.
Themes
LanguageTranslationCommunicationCulture
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of learning new languages.
More from George Steiner
All quotes βThe most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.
George SteinerRead
I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.
George SteinerRead
It took 10 months for me to learn to tie a lace; I must have howled with rage and frustration. But one day I could tie my laces. That no one can take from you. I profoundly distrust the pedagogy of ease.
George SteinerRead
The letter kills the spirit. The written text is mute in the face of responding challenge. It does not admit of inward growth and correction. Text subverts the absolutely vital role of memory.
George SteinerRead
Books are in no hurry. An act of creation is in no hurry; it reads us, it privileges us infinitely. The notion that it is the occasion for our cleverness fills me with baffled bitterness and anger.
George SteinerRead
Similar quotes
People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time.
Steven PinkerRead
Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground
Noah WebsterRead
Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
My language! heavens!I am the best of them that speak this speech. Were I but where 'tis spoken.
William ShakespeareRead
Look at almost any passage, and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it's just that that's the way language works.
Steven PinkerRead
People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
John McwhorterRead