The code of hospitality may be the most ancient and inviolate of traditions -- compelling widely divergent civilizations over thousands of years to welcome the perfect stranger into their midst. Strangeness, Odysseus knew, might disguise an Athena -- or, to the author of the New Testament book of Hebrews -- an angel! One never knew. Better to treat the stranger as sacred guest, just in case.

While our globe shrinks with the accelerating pace of technology, so too shrinks our humanity when we fall incurious and disrespectful. When we let ourselves be led by dogmas and agendas, we ignore or overpower strangers -- or reduce them to adversaries. Literary translation at its best opposes this dehumanizing drift by preserving and extending, through the world's literature, the ancient art of hospitality: "I have met a wonderful stranger!" the translator says. "I want to bring this stranger among you! Come here! Read! This is superb, different, new!" So we connect. And are enlarged. Through translation, we may even meet an angel, or a goddess.

Lynn Hoggard has translated Tent Posts (1997) by Henri Michaux and Sketch of a Serpent (1987) by Paul Valéry. In addition to her publications in the field of literature and translation, she has as Arts Writer for the Wichita Falls Times/Record News published more than six hundred reviews, columns, features, and news stories about the arts. She is Professor of French at Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas.