"Word bridge": this is what translation has to be, a bridge that connects two separate and mutually incomprehensible worlds. Across the bridge the message gets to the receiver successfully; across the bridge feelings, ideas and information reach the other side and hit their target.

But the bridge is also a no man's land, a suspended dimension where the meaning, not the single words, provides material for translation; on the bridge the words in the source language gradually loose their features and shift into meaning, the universal language shared by everyone, and they eventually assume a new form in the target language, leaving the message unchanged.