This essay develops a comparative study of English translations of the Greek term 'historia' and the Chinese terms 'Shiji' and 'Taishi' to examine the problems involved in approaching ancient concepts through the historicist dilemma between identity and difference. It explores how these translations were fundamentally shaped by a Eurocentric discourse that legitimised the paradigmatic status of the Greek tradition and excluded Chinese concepts from the dominant vocabulary of modern historiography. Subsequently it investigates how Eurocentric historiography was sustained by metaphors of translation and categories of translatability deployed by Western philosophy to designate a historiographic metalanguage founded on the opposition between tradition and otherness. In conclusion, it reflects on how translation can also act to interrogate this metalanguage by pointing to disjunctions within the European heritage and forming a trans-cultural and trans-temporal historiography modelled upon the borderline language of translation.