Once while I was on Pinterest, I came across this: "Every act of communication is an act of translation." by Gregory Rabassa.

Gregory Rabassa was a legendary translator of Portuguese and Spanish literature into English. I've never read or even heard about him. But this sentence hit me like a wrecking ball - a smack to my vulnerability.

It is true, I think, that every sense of communication translates a specific type of emotion, that perhaps no one else except for the origin itself can understand. Every translation, for me, is filtered. The more it is translated, it is changed. It is almost impossible to exceed the sentiment that the original can convey. It can come close but never be accurate.

In writing, language, conversing, or any other way of expressing myself, I am in translation.

The unfortunate part is that the translation, again, is never accurate. Hence, my writing stirs up quite a handful of misunderstandings. The language I use to write, English, is a translation of everything my mind haunts me about.

Emotions transform into words, words into expressions. It astonishes me, because every time I wrote or spoke before this, I believed that whatever I was trying to put into words is first hand.

And in that sense, In Translation, I am forever imperfect.