Translators are similar to actors: they both assume altered identities in an effort to modify a sign system and represent it in front of an audience. They are both praised for being creative, but also blamed for being technicians; treated as servants of truth, but also as masters of deceit. This paper aims at further developing the metaphor of translation as performance by isolating specific issues dealt with by actors and theatre scholars and reviewing their relevance to translation practice. One of these issues is the question of time concept: translators, used to revising their work when they wish, may still benefit from strategies developed by performers who cannot go back in time and correct their errors. Another issue involves impersonation: performance scholars, like Diderot and Stanislavsky, have dealt with the question whether practitioners who imitate a persona should perfect their external performances or change their internal natures. The conclusions they draw may be relevant to translators. The limits of this metaphor can be pushed even further by adapting additional performance issues to the realities of translation. The acting metaphor thus exemplifies the fertility of interaction between Translation Studies and other disciplines and also contributes to the status of translation as an art.