Every translator of poetry confronts a familiar tension between fidelity to a poem's literal sense and fidelity to its sound. A rendering that preserves each word's dictionary meaning may lose the rhythm and rhyme that gave the original its force; a version that recreates the music may quietly depart from what the lines actually say. Most practicing translators treat this as a matter of degree rather than an absolute choice, sacrificing a little of one aim to secure more of the other. Readers who know only the translation cannot see the compromise; they receive the translator's judgment as though it were the poem itself. For this reason some critics argue that a translated poem should be read as a distinct work, credited jointly to the poet and the translator.