A donkey is a horse translated into Dutch.

The line is presented as an aphoristic joke by the German satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, contrasting the perceived nobility of a horse with the humbler donkey by imagining the donkey as what results when a horse is "translated" into Dutch—i.e., altered into something that sounds comically harsh to a German ear. It circulated later in English-language literary commentary and quotation collections.

It’s a language-based insult framed as a translation metaphor: changing the "language" (Dutch) supposedly degrades the original (horse) into something less elegant (donkey). The humor depends on stereotypes about how Dutch sounds to German speakers rather than on anything about the animals themselves.

Der Esel kommt mir vor wie ein Pferd ins Holländische übersetzt.

The donkey seems to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

A donkey is simply a horse translated into Dutch.

A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.