Following Gile’s plea for an investigation of the similarities between interpreting research and translation research, a legitimate area of enquiry would be the similarities in interpreter and translator moves, seen within the interactional frameworks which give rise to them. The available dichotomies for describing translator’s orientations – overt and covert, direct and indirect or documentary and instrumental, are all viable in their own terms but have to be unduly stretched if they are to cover the full range of oral and written translating events. A proposal to describe such events in terms of the full participation framework would seem more promising in that the model would be better equipped to cover all cases. In this chapter the author argues that descriptive studies should take account of the full participation framework of such events. They should include socio-pragmatic studies and pragma-linguistic studies. Only thus can the deep-level similarities between the various modes of translating be properly examined.