According to the author of this article, a translation is always ‘reconciliatory’ because it tends to fade certain particularities of the original. Apart from the meaning and the style, this tendency concerns certain aspects of language itself. The study of Spitaels draws on the differences between the Dutch of Flanders and the Dutch of The Netherlands, which are generally erased in French translation. As the author shows, these differences are not purely lexical, as one might first believe. They are situated at a deeper level of language and reflect two different ways of seeing things and two different attitudes vis-à-vis of the same language; Dutch. The author proposes an original hypothesis which permits to understand why the Dutch of Flanders is better suited for translation into French than the Dutch of The Netherlands.