Although it is generally acknowledged that postcolonial literary works written in the colonizers' language are a form of intercultural transfer involving the transpositions of aspects of the indigenous language, cultural patterns, beliefs and literary traditions, some critics claim that postcolonial fictions are translations. In this article the author addresses certain fundamental aspects of language and text that make postcolonial works seem to be translations, even translations of themselves. He concludes translation and postcolonial writing share both formal and functional commonalities, but are, however, distinct. The author takes the view that is its a metaphorical assertion to suggest that a postcolonial work is a translation, even a translation of itself.