Foreword.
Conveyin~ French
IYl
vglish
This book was initially written in French， at the
suggestion of Monsieur A. Blanchard， director of the
Paris publishing firm Gallimard Deno~l. Except for
letters to my family and a few speeches， I have never
written in my native language since I left Europe in 1924
at the age of twenty-~ree. Several of my earlier books
have been translated from English into French， but not
by me， and I have not read the translations.
To my great surprise， writing in French proved al-
most effortless， and I have been told by Monsieur Blan-
chard that except for a few Anglicisms my text was ac-
ceptable without further editing. But a greater surprise
came when I found it extremely difficult to translate my
own French into English. Time and time again， in fact， I
could not translate and had to convey my thoughts in
other forms. If large sections of Beast or Angel? are sub-
stantially different from the French version， Choisir
d Etre Humain， it is not because I wanted to update the
information or add new thoughts， but because this was the
only way I could convey in English what I had tried to
express in French. I have naturally been puzzled by my
difficulties as translator of myself and shall try here to
analyze the cause.
I wrote Choisir d Etre Hurnain in a completely
American environment--in mid-Manhattan and Aspen，
Colorado. Yet as soon as I began writing in French， I
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