After a comparative analysis of the source and target texts, this paper attempts to put forward an explanation to account for H.F. Cary’s avoidance policy as he deals with Dante’s puns in his early nineteenth-century translation of the Divina Commedia. The aim is to consider the findings of the analysis in relation to the issue of compensation. No discussion of translation can avoid dealing with this issue, but there is evidence that compensation cannot be called upon to account for all the foregrounding devices in the target text. In particular, the relationship between compensation and the translators’ ideology must be taken into account. The paper concludes by suggesting some conditions which might make it easier to identify instances of compensation. Harvey’s (1995) descriptive framework is employed with a view to improving its explanatory power.