In this paper, Stierle retrieves a long history of relations between the self and the other by unraveling the philological filaments of the term ‘translation’ itself, in its several metamorphoses within Romance languages. In Stierle’s account, the term itself harbors a crisis of translation, specifically a crisis in attempting to translate the orders. Translation necessarily marks the border crossing where, if anywhere, one culture passes over to the other, whether to inform it, to further its development, to capture or enslave it, or merely to open a space between the other and itself. Stierle’s canvas is Romance philology, but he has one eye on the phenomena of translation or mistranslation that constitute German-Jewish relations. Stierle openly voices his parallel concern in his closing appeal. In this epilogue, the options of European translatability that seem to him most authentic are offered as one kind of German-Jewish hope.