The papers collected in this volume represent cooperative research, distinct in kind and scope, by members of the Göttinger center for the study of literary translations. Section one focuses on a vital aspect of multilingual transfer: the changing role of French intermediate translations in eighteenth-century Germany. Section two opens with a paper examining the effects of translation on multicultural elements in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The remaining papers in this part are concerned with one specific problem of intercultural transfer, viz. how did German translators of the nineteenth century respond to phenomena differentiating American from German culture? They cover the range from material culture to political systems to American humor, and suggest plausible explanations for striking translational deviations. Section three comprises three different discussions on this central aspect of cultural transfer through literary translations. The problem of translatability is the issue of the final paper.