The quotation, according to A. Compagnon, is a foreign body in a text and the reader’s skills are necessarily mobilised in the process of deciphering it. The translator, however, is first of all a reader who is—or is not—aware of the presence of a hypotext, identifies and interprets it, then adopts a particular strategy during the translating process. In a first part, the author debates the limits of the hypotext (a writing phenomenon or an effect on the reader), its various aspects and implications, using the categories defined by G. Genette, more particularly allusions, references, pastiches and burlesque parodies. In a second part, the translator’s choices are examined when the hypotext is clearly expressed in the text and, in the more ambiguous cases when the perception of the hypotext seems to be linked to the translator’s personal references, the question being the reception by the target reader. If, out of literary ignorance or deliberate choice, the translator fails to take into account the presence of the hypotext, can we consider that the source text is mutilated and the reader penalised? If, on the contrary, the source text is expanded and re-oriented owing to an intertextual overdetermination, isn’t the reader manipulated? Whatever the translator’s strategies, it is up to the naïve or knowledgeable reader to go ahead with what P. Lejeune calls a 'palimpsestuous' reading.