The article elaborates the idea of translated texts as constructs in their own right and integrates it into a larger view on literary communication and interaction. This perspective is profoundly indebted to polysystem theory. The author puts forward three closely intertwined categories: production, tradition and import. 'Production' covers all new messages of whatever textual kind that are being produced within a given system (literature); 'tradition' and 'importation' both comprise elements that are co-present within the system and interact with it, while still belonging to different systems. Translation, then, is a cross-cutting discursive procedure establishing relations and defining configuration between the three categories.