Cultural translation is a key conceptual tool for understanding the effects of cross-cultural mixtures and transnational flows. It is also a necessary term for grasping the cosmopolitan forms of agency and collectivity. In this paper the author explores the strengths and limits of models of cultural translation that focus on the creativity produced at the point of the encounter with difference. By reflecting on the example of the invention of a new visual language by Indigenous artists in Australia he also considers the need to expand the concept of creativity. This expanded definition of creativity would need to confront the paradoxical force of the void. Hence, he contends that the theoretical debates on cosmopolitanism and cultural translation should also be tied with an investigation into the critical force of the void in creativity.