Good translation requires writing skills in each of its three stages: decoding the original text; transferring its cultural and linguistic element into the context of the target language; and encoding the information in that context. During decoding, the translator must be conscious of speech level, word usage, cultural references, syntactic devices used for stylistic effect, connotation as well as denotation, and writing skills. The second stage of translation requires making cultural and linguistic elements recognizable in both linguistic communities. Often, this requires some research, and may mean inserting footnotes for clarification. In the third stage, encoding text into the new language and context, writing skills are most clearly needed to make both style and context of the target language text faithful to the original. Translation from Spanish to English is seen to involve major structural changes at times, to reconcile differences in grammatical and stylistic patterns of the languages; for example, longer Spanish sentences may have to be broken into more, shorter sentences in English, without losing the relationships between elements in the sentences. It is further suggested that the best possible results occur when the translator has writing skills equal to the original author. A handout for this paper is written in Spanish and English. (Contains 10 references.) (MSE)