I started with letters, then poems and speeches, then novels, articles and books, and now I write notes. Writing practice was vital to me, it helped me to give meaning to things and to move on. However, writing is a branch of what is deeper and more general - our relationship with language itself. The subject of these few notes is language.

 Let's start by examining the activity of translators from one language to another. Most translations these days are technical, here I am concerned with literary translations: translations of texts concerned with individual experience.

 The prevailing view of what this implies assumes that the translator or translators study the words on one page in one language and then perform them in another language on another page. This includes what is called "literal translation". After that, adaptation takes place in order to respect and assimilate the linguistic traditions and rules of the second language. Finally, an editing process takes place to reproduce the equivalent of the “sound” of the original text. Many translations, perhaps most, follow this approach. The results are valuable, but second-rate.

 Why? Because true translation is not a binary process between two languages, but rather a triangular process. The third point in the triangle is what lies behind the words in the original text before it was written