Would it be more correct to assume that the operation of translating does not differ too radically from interpretive performances such as playacting, or, to adopt a more fitting simile, such as the public reading of a poem? In theory, the difference may seem slight, but it is far from negligible in practice. The intent in playacting and poetry reading is to give voice and gesture to a verbal composition which, though physically mute and inert on the written or printed page, may speak and "act" eloquently by itself for the inner ear, and imaginary vision, of the "lonely crowd" of its readers. Translating, however, endeavors to give the verbal composition a strange clothing, a changed body, and a novel spirit. Should we then extend the previous analogy to another set of interpretive crafts, and suggest that translating is the literary equivalent of musical direction and execution? After all, like the performing musician, the translator goes to work only when he has another artist's creation before his eyes.