Using let in Scheme

I remember a post a while back where the author said that it's better to avoid using binding constructs like let in languages like Scheme. I was wondering how you'd rewrite something like this:
(let ((s (find (lambda (a) (char=? x (first a))) *translation-list*)))
 (if s (second s) x))

>>17
That's a stack overflow waiting to happen.
% node
(function (x) { x(x); })(function (x) { x(x); });
RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded