Infinite sentences

Living in a country occupied by the Russian army, deprived of my passport and so without any possibility of leaving, I found it very difficult to defend myself. I succeeded, nevertheless, in publishing a letter of protest in the Times Literary Supplement and even in bringing about the publication in Britain of a revised, complete version, that is, without deletions and with the chapters in their original sequence (Penguin Books, 1970). My satisfaction with this turned out to be only relative: a glance through the book showed me that the translation was still very free; for example, an obviously important matter of punctuation: Helena's monologue, composing all of Part Two, in which each paragraph is one long "infinite" sentence in my original, had been broken up into many very short sentences. I decided to close the book and know no more of it.
--Milan Kundera, "Author's Note," The Joke (Definite Version), 1992

A journey to the end of the gastro-intestinal system

The project of translating any of his works is besmirched in advance by Céline's contempt for translators, whose attempts inspired him with a neat neologism equating tranlsator with the anus: trouducuteur.
—from Marlon Jones's introduction to Céline's Normance

Potentially colorful

From Dzyd Jane (source unknown):

Ichiro does not speak English in interviews, so he uses a translator. In my experience, translators usually take bits and pieces from what players say, making a potentially colorful answer somewhat bland, but neither Ichiro nor his translator has ever seemed to have had that problem.

Once, when asked about going to Cleveland, he was quoted by a translator as saying: “To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to. If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”

Or, another time, when asked about facing Daisuke Matsuzaka, he said: “I hope he arouses the fire that’s dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger.”

UPDATE: D.T.M. Hua sends this link:

Every year, after the AL manager addresses his team, Ichiro bursts from his locker, a bundle of kinetic energy, and proceeds, in English, to disparage the National League with an H-bomb of F-bombs, stunning first-timers who had no idea Ichiro speaks the queen’s language fluently and making returnees happy that they had played well enough to see the pep talk again.

Hua adds: "This is like when I went to the Yao Ming press conference his first year in the NBA, and it was clear to any bilngual that his translator was merely a diversionary scrim."