Posing as a manuscript translated from Arabic, Don Quijote (DQ) is an extended metaphor of fiction writing as translation, and the translator is challenging views of translation as a mechanical transference of meaning. A central metaphor for reading translation in DQ is looking at the reverse side of a tapestry. This evocation of the materiality of Castilian life in the seventeenth century is expressed in the repeated use of a word which has not yet been captured in translation — at least not into English. A study of the translations of DQ in any given language illuminates both its evolution and the evolution of the practice of translation in it. Teaching DQ in translation, the author questions the attribution of national characteristics to texts, and to notice the repetition, thus salience, of words that have not been acknowledged by Spanish literary critics. Above all, teaching DQ in translation can lead one to a fundamental and foundational discovery that DQ cannot be understood without understanding that (and why, and how) translation is its central metaphor.