Taking skopos as a starting point, this article seeks to refine the notion in the light of several insights afforded by interactional sociolinguistics, principally audience design (Bell 1984), the variables of power and distance, and aspects of linguistic politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987). By applying these notions to the analysis of various instances of translating, it is suggested that significant translational shifts may be traceable to systematic differences between the audience design and text design of producers of source texts and target texts. This exercise leads to a reflection on appropriate methods for researching audience design in translation and the status of textual evidence.