Translation and translators have long been present in creative writing, as readers of Cervantes well know. It is as if countless writers were preoccupied with poet and translator Lynn Hejinian’s suggestion that every piece of writing is a work of translation, and they wanted to probe her suggestion as they wrote. That statement seems to be particularly true with respect to the last several decades, when translator protagonists and uncertain, even missing originals have been appearing so frequently that one is tempted to speculate that these figurations tend toward the formation of a sort of genre that includes reflection, at times deep cogitation, as well as figuration. One of the most intriguing aspects of this phenomenon is the attention focused on the effect of translation on the translator, who often undergoes some degree of transformation, whether physical, emotional, or intellectual, or a mix of the three. The interest here is to explore that transformation in several novels with translator protagonists; in commentary about translation by creative writers; and in the current author’s own work as the translator of a novel that has a translator protagonist and whose author was also a translator.