'T is true, composing is the nobler part
But good translation is no easy art (Roscoman)

"… and it could be that the foreign literature they were reading in translation was more of an inspiration to them than the native literature: that it played a more positive role in shaping minds, in creating expectations, setting goals and delineating role models."  D.E Pollard 

Translation is at best an echo. 
George Borrow
Translation is the art of failure. 
Umberto Eco
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best. 
Friedrich Von Schlegel

A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it. 
John Millington Synge

If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream. 
Rene Magritte