Theo Hermans wants to explore the law of translation and the ensuing task of the translator. His hypothesis is that the 16th century Western-European translational discourse imposed literal translation as the law of translation. To test this hypothesis he studies the following texts: Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse by du Bellay, Art poétique by Peletier du Mans, Brief aan Pammachius by Hieronymus, letters by Erasmus, a preface to a translation of the Song of Salomon by Luis de León, De ratione dicendi by Juan Luis Vives, and other texts by Jacques Gohorry, Denis Sauvage, Andreas Schottus, Ben Johnson.