This essay focuses on two models or ideals of translation: the 'creative', whereby the translator assumes an independent identity and projects an independently valid work, and the 'mediatory', where translators see themselves as providing an entry to the original work for readers who do not know the source language. The author looks at the interaction – or rather, the absence of interaction – of these two models in the context of Indian, particularly Bengali literature. Modern Bengali literature has extensively employed the mode of creative absorption of texts from other languages, along a trajectory ranging from direct translation to adaptation to 'imitation' to memorial traces to general inspiration. At the same time, the Bengali reading community demands an exceptionally high fidelity to the original in formal translations out of its own literature, above all as regards the works of Rabindranath Tagore. The author looks at the coexistence of these two diverging modes of rendering, and tries to identify their root cause in certain features of colonial and postcolonial cultural relations.