Maria had been an interpreter for eleven years, and she knew the first rule: you do not add, you do not remove and you do not improve. You translate.
That Tuesday, she sat in a small glass booth between two delegations who were negotiating a fishing treaty. For three days the talks had been difficult. At eleven, the older minister lost his patience. He leaned forward and said, in his own language, an idiom that means roughly: "That is a load of fish heads."
Maria hesitated for one second. Then she said into the microphone: "That proposal needs more work."
The other minister frowned, nodded and began to explain his numbers again. The room relaxed. By evening, the treaty was signed, and everybody shook hands.
That night, Maria could not sleep. She had broken the first rule. She had made a rude sentence polite. Perhaps she had changed history. Perhaps she had lost her job.
In the morning, she told her supervisor everything. He listened and said nothing for a long time. "Did the minister want to end the talks?" he asked.
"No. I think he wanted to push harder."
"Then you translated what he meant," said the supervisor. "But don't do it again. Next time, the idiom might be the whole point."
Maria went back to her booth. She was not sure if she was relieved or ashamed. She was sure only of one thing: the fish never knew.
Fiction note: All people, places and events in this text are fictional.