One way a writer can make his readers conscious of a novel's cultural setting is by insertion of referential expressions that belong to this culture. In this article the author looks into the Swedish translation of a novel by Michel Tournier where two different cultures are part of the setting, and where referential expressions occur in two languages. Do the translator's strategies vary for handling expressions from different languages within the same novel? Is his translation affected by his declared preference for preserving the exotic element in a translation? These are the main questions in this limited study of culturally related referential expressions in La goutte d'or by Michel Tournier and the translation, Gulddroppen, made by C.G. Bjurström.