No Document Is Alike Eric Wilson (bio) The Soviets' surprise launch of Sputnik in 1957 came as a wake-up call for the United States. In response, the Eisenhower administration created the National Defense Education Act Title IV fellowships. While the main purpose of these NDEA fellowships was to provide the US with engineering and mathematics experts, it also paid for students to pursue foreign languages. The idea was that if our nation knew languages it would be safe. I thought that if I knew languages, I would be safe. The NDEA paid for my entire—entire—graduate study at Stanford, including an allowance for books. I had classes in Middle High German, Old High German, Old Icelandic, and Old English, and the price of textbooks was steep. I had no doubt that a career in languages would be perfect for me. Along with his genes, I had inherited from my grandfather a love of words. At the university in Lincoln, Nebraska, his Latin Club performed Seneca in togas and in the original language. His Roman self permeated his everyday self, and when he was flummoxed by practical things (which was often), he would throw up his hands and cry out "Hui! Hui! Hui!" By the time I was sixteen, my fascination with languages landed me in Germany as a summer exchange student. It turned out that my host family didn't speak English, as promised; they just wanted an American. My German mother wouldn't feed me until I could identify all the dishes. Erich, das ist Eisbein. Eisbein mit Erbsenpüree!—Na, Erich, was ist denn das? I came home with a dodgy fluency. As I pursued a PhD in German, my main love remained the words themselves. I could always remember when I first "met" a word. When we were sitting in a Kneipe—which is slang and yet the standard colloquial word for pub—Andreas had cried out Alle Achtung! the first time I downed a potent Schnapps in one gulp. Literally the phrase meant "All attention!" but through context and common sense I knew it had to be "Nice going!" or "Congratulations." I'm not sure when I met Andreas, but I will always remember when he first used words or phrases that were new to me. It was stipulated that NDEA Fellows pursue an academic career of teaching in institutions of higher education after acquiring their degrees. Accordingly, I went on to teach at UCLA and then Pomona College—happily debt-free. But by 1973 America's urgent priorities shifted completely. The foreign language requirement was abolished by colleges almost everywhere—after all, doesn't everyone speak English?—and after eight years in the field, my position was [End Page 73] eliminated. It was the only thing I had been trained for. What else could I do? I bought a hulking copy of the Sunday Los Angeles Times, which had entire sections of want ads. Under "tr" there were countless entries for "tree trimmers," but nothing for translators. So I turned to the phone book and started typing up résumés. I sent them to every agency in the book. One evening, after taking a walk through Westwood—spending time in Tower Records and a few of the crowded bookstores that remained open until 11:00 pm—I came back to find a message on my Phone Mate. It was one of those brand-new gadgets the Broadway department store had just started selling: "Introducing the home appliance that answers your phone!" The tinny voice on the tape played at slightly the wrong speed and had a French accent. The man asked that I call him immediately, regardless how late. Hervé Bellocq—he had spelled the name for me carefully—answered on the first ring. He owned an agency in Beverly Hills called Panlingua Translations and had an important assignment due at nine o'clock the following morning. He had gone through all the résumés he had on file and just discovered I could do Swedish. "It's urrrgent," Bellocq told me, making the word sound more French than English. It would be a wonderful opportunity for me...