Concerning translations.

A post on boingboing concludes with the following quote from Madame Bovary:

Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

It's one of my favorite quotes; one that I picked up in high school. Not because I've read Flaubert's book, or watched the movie, but because Carl Sagan's book, Contact, opens a chapter with it. But it reads a little bit differently:

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

I don't care which is the proper translation, I just know which one I like better.