Book excerpt: As translation involves more than mere mechanics but as a discipline tied to cultural understanding, translators must focus on the dissimilarities and incongruities between the source and target societies, as well as their languages. Francisco Castro-Paniagua has written a book that will enable those involved in this process to begin to understand the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic cultures in a more cohesive manner. Drawing from Lévi-Strauss, Paz, Hymes, among others, the author focuses first on a general theory of the two cultures, and then discusses their most basic traits. The work concludes by analyzing the published translations of two works.