The purpose of the present article is to lay the foundations of a generalised or non-philosophical theory of translation which describes the way in which philosophy manipulates translation yet does not participate in its complex game of manipulation. In the guise of reflecting translation, philosophy proceeds instead to a peculiar re-interpretation whose limits have to be clearly delineated. Therefore, characterising the “system of deformations” (Berman) that a certain number of philosophical enterprises (Schleiermacher and Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, Benjamin’s theory of translation and its re-translation by Derrida) imposed on translation is the author's main concern. Two main tendencies emerge : 1) an idealisation of translation which happens to be included within interpretation ; 2) a materialisation of translation which sinks back into a strange proximity with Otherness while gaining a certain autonomy vis-à-vis Being.