‘The poet moves from life to language. The translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what’s between the lines, the mysterious implications’. In this passage, Anne Michaels attempts to convey the dynamics involved in translating. The translator’s task is to redirect and reverse the creative process of the poet by reconnecting the poem back to the body of life-experiences. Michaels introduces a second aspect of translation when she likens both the poet and the translator to the immigrant. The image of immigrant introduces to this intricate process the otherness, strangeness, unknownness, the invisible, etc. Poets, translators and immigrants find themselves in new territories where they have to maintain a workable balance between the old and the new, the security of the familiar and the excitement of the unfamiliar, and to weigh up the risks between remaining rigid or losing their sense of proportion; it is not easy to survive in a new country, with all the debilitating perils and promising opportunities.