The translator's craft lies first in his command of an exceptionally large vocabulary as well as all syntactic resources – his ability to use them elegantly, flexibly, succinctly. All translation problems finally resolve themselves into problems of how to write well in the target language. Benjamin (1923) stated that in a good work, language surrounds the content as a shell surrounds its fruit, whilst a translation is a coat hanging loosely round the content of the original in large folds. A translation is never finished, and one has to keep paring away at it, reducing the element of paraphrase, tightening the language. The shorter the translation, the better it is likely to be.