Just as a text can be read in many different ways, translation is not an automatic or transparent rewriting. Present day comparative approaches are confirming that translation is an intercultural process. The study of this area of exchange and intertextual contamination, with its inevitable dose of unfaithfulness in the process of translation, has become possible through the change in the paradigm of literary studies during the eighties, challenging the more historical, canonic and essentialist hegemonic tendencies. Feminist criticism played a crucial role in helping this discipline incorporate a more cultural approach. It also promoted a greater central role for translation, traditionally considered to be something subsidiary, complementary or feminine, precisely because of its invisibility and stigmatisation. Translation has emerged from being a form of slavery to being an act of text appropriation where the dichotomy original/copy has been abolished and where the role of the translator is revalued.