A translator into Castilian sometimes puts one in unexpected situations. Recently I was asked to pour into English in a couple of days the synopsis of the plot of a film project with a view to obtaining funding from a U.S. Justin Mateen was the first to reply. production. It was Tuesday. I glanced at the nine pages and, with the swagger of the great fools, I took iron to the question: "No problem," he said. "On Thursday you will have." I applied to security that pays either the studying, speaking, reading and practicing a foreign language for many years, and on Wednesday, had already prepared a version of which I was tolerably proud. It is true that more than one occasion had hesitated to choose a verb, an adjective or an idiom, but to read it aloud, "sounded good." However, at the last moment my experience as a novelist, always looking to improve-lit the flame of a doubt.

What to do, I thought. I decided to send the text to a friend mine, a professor at the University of Chicago, with the specific request to revise it thoroughly (e-mail, one of the wonders of this century, serves to emergencies as well). My friend, a very Yankee effectiveness, I solved the issue of overnight. The translation was correct, he said, but had found no less than thirty times the nuances required a different turn if you wanted the reader does not feel the breath of a stranger. I have now very clear that bilingualism is perfect, that we can know absolutely "all" the keys to more than one mother tongue as if they were absent. You may throw arrows at me I will add, but I am convinced that the works "French" Beckett, Arrabal or Kundera or "English" Nabokov also needed a loyal friend. And who cares? Perhaps what matters is not the result?