What is the creative process of a translator? How do they navigate the crossroads of languages? In this essay—part work log, part travelogue—Selma Ancira documents and reflects on her craft as she translates Nikos Kazantzakis's most famous novel, Zorba the Greek, from Greek into Spanish. In order to translate the text, she embarks on a journey in the author's footsteps: exploring the landscapes of Crete, searching for vestiges of the novel's settings, and conversing with locals to find words and meanings.

"Because translating a book is experiencing a kind of metamorphosis. It's becoming the author, following in his footsteps, walking in his footsteps, reading the books he read, discovering his favorite authors and whether or not you are captivated by them; it's delving into the rest of his work to situate the book you are translating within the whole; "It means knowing his diaries and letters, tracking down his translations, when they exist, and learning about his way of understanding this profession, knowing what he considered priority and what superfluous; it means knowing his weaknesses as a human being and also his strengths... Translating a book means transporting yourself to the century and the environment of the translated plot; it means recreating, in your time and circumstances, a world that has often vanished." —Selma Ancira