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