It is not advisable, in my opinion, to translate in any other language besides those that inhabited our lives. What I mean is, it’s not enough to know them. What’s crucial is that we were or have been existing in them. The languages in which we’ve existed, those which time have lent us their joys and sorrows, and those which became vitally important for us to express ourselves are those that, when there is a literary vocation, find us better equipped to tackle their translation. I existed in Portuguese, if you’ll allow me to say it as such, and for many years during what were my foundational years. This is how I stopped visiting it and feeling it as a foreign language. Those who know how to open up Tot he secrets of a language they translate, perceives and communes with both the sense of what is said and with the rhythm of the written form, and it’s within that skillfully preserved breath that makes a successful version unmistakable. However, we no longer hear it when we opt to follow the literal path; a path that shows itself to be death to the personal style of the written voice we are looking for. The best abidance with the translated text demands imagination, an aptitude for taking detours or side paths, as well as knowing how to make use of analogies and that which is dormant, as long as the purpose and the tone of the author is unaffected. This applies in equal measure, I am sure, to prose and verse, given that prose, when it truly is thus, does not lag behind poetry in neither achievement nor in demands. It is evident that the joy in translation comes from, in great measure, in knowing that we are serving those who, in our opinion, deserve it, and in this manner, supporting their recognition. But, how can we not consider, when we proceed in this manner, that we are leaving behind the curse of Babel, the mandate that forced the dispersion of those who should have sought it, not to become homogenous, but to endeavour to draw from their differences in order to have a dialogue?