If Kafka’s definition “[w]riting means revealing oneself to excess” is true, translators cannot be regarded as authors in the sense of “the person who originates or gives existence to anything”, where authorship determines responsibility for something that is created. On the other hand, the word autore (or, for that matter, author, Author, auteur, etc.) is derived from lat. augere, “to increase”, and its original meaning is “one who causes to grow”. This paper seeks to show that from a functionalist viewpoint and contrary to the widespread idea of loss in translation the translator is someone who gives the source-language text a wider scope, making it accessible to a new audience.