This paper attempts to place translation within the universe of international exchanges and to study it as a factor in the struggle for legitimacy in the literary and political fields. They are specifically concerned with the role translation plays in consecrating authors and texts, and hence in the distribution and transfer of cultural capital. The author’s model draws heavily on Bourdieu’s concept of capital as accumulated prestige (whether economic, social or cultural). She assumes that literary capital is relatively independent of linguistic capital. She nevertheless stresses the theme of inequality and power struggle, and rather than talk about centre and periphery, she prefers to distinguish between dominating and dominated languages in the literary sphere. Dominating languages have considerable literary capital, partly because of the number of texts considered universal which are written in these languages. Dominated languages have little literary capital. The author identifies four scenarios and argues that the significance of translation in any of these scenarios depends on the respective position of the source and target languages, the author, and the translator.