This paper aims to reflect on the wide range of contributions to the study of the translation of cultural references. These contributions have their origin in different disciplines and approaches (structuralism, differential stylistics, functionalism in translation, pragmatics, communication studies, cognitivism, literary studies, …), which makes their integration into an overall perspective rather complicated; differences in concept and denomination are acute even when they study the same phenomenon. When the various choices of translation solutions - expressive procedures and solution strategies - are considered, the problem becomes even more entangled.