The wet concrete fallacy: an introspection of an Arabic translator

This introspective case study explores the evolving power dynamic between the translator and language, framed through the lens of absurdism and the Mastery learning style. Drawing on decades of personal experience as a translator, interpreter, educator, and scholar, the author reflects on moments of linguistic struggle and agency. By creating and translating intermediary texts—those mentally constructed between the source and target—the author demonstrates how a translator can both dominate and submit to language, achieving communicative fidelity and functional beauty. The study embraces self-reflection as a valid research method, challenging traditional research rigidity and positioning subjectivity as insight rather than bias. Ultimately, it argues that translator dominance (DomTrans) arises not from defying language, but from understanding and ethically manipulating its ethnolinguistic forces. The translator becomes not merely a conduit, but a co-author—grasping the bird of language lightly enough to keep it alive, yet firmly enough to shape its flight.