The value of "fidelity" was made clear t o me by an interestingexperiment I once witnessed: average 9-year-old students at apublic school in Rochester, New York, were given a text by Rimbaudand a bilingual dictionary, and asked to translate the poem.Neither they nor their teacher knew a word of French. What theyproduced were not masterpieces, but they were generally as accurate,and occasionally wittier, than any of the existing scholarly/ versions. In short, up to a point, anyone can translate anythingfaithfully.