The article proposes a theory of translation based on Pierre Bourdieu's structuralist constructivism. By constructivism Bourdieu means a twofold social genesis, one constitutive of what he calls `habitus', the other of social structures. The habitus of a translator is a durable, transposable disposition acquired by the socialized body, by which the translator exercises his practice in a field to which a text to be translated belongs. The field is the locus where the translator posits the text's action, at the conjunction of a subjectivity and an historicity. Two cases of translators' habitus are taken as illustrations, with reference to Maurice-Edgar Coindreau and Marcel Duhamel. Following Bourdieu's structuralist constructivism, translating agents are seen as playing the role of practical operators who exercise their power in a relational way, i.e. competitively as well as cooperatively.