‘Paratranslation’ has been proclaimed as a revolutionary approach that finally puts translation and, with it, translation studies into its proper place. After a brief analysis of the etymology of the word, the article discusses the origin of the approach and its definitions, coming to the conclusion that it starts out from a very narrow, linguistic concept of translation that was left behind by skopos theory and the functional approaches, among others, more than 30 years ago. If translation is seen as an interaction carried out within a situation-in-culture, there is no need for ‘new’ concepts which turn out to be a wheel that has been in use in many parts of the world for quite a long time.