In this article the author presents an answer to the question why Translation Studies took a cultural turn from the 1990s onwards, although recognizing that the field developed in a much broader way than focusing on culture alone (e.g. polysystems theory, feminist criticism, skopos theory, postcolonial translation theory), dealing also with questions about ideology and ethics. The author argues that this broadening of the horizon and the cultural turn in Translation Studies in itself can be seen as part of a cultural turn that was taking place in the humanities generally in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is a result of the need for greater intercultural awareness in the world today. This turn offers us a chance to understand more about the complexities of textual transfer, about what happens to texts as they move into new contexts. For this purpose, the author introduces two critical tools deriving from the work of Pierre Bourdieu: cultural capital and textual grid. The author considers these tools helpful for studying cultural interaction and the relationship between two cultural systems in which an original and its translation are embedded.