This paper starts from the concept of the contextual determination of translation. Toury claims that “cultures resort to translating precisely as a major way of filling in gaps, whenever and wherever such gaps manifest themselves – either as such, or (very often) from a comparative perspective, i.e., in view of a corresponding non-gap in another culture that the prospective target culture has reasons to look to and try to exploit”. In this paper, the author explores how the sociolinguistic situation of the Galician language acts as a strong determining factor for the general cultural dynamics in Galician, and for the functioning of the Galician translation system in particular.