The author examines the problematic of ‘appropriation’ and the question of making “one’s own” what was ‘alien’ in the tradition of hermeneutic philosophy in relation to translation, from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. If hermeneutics is translation, according to the great philosophers of the tradition, it is crucial to examine how translation can be the model of interpretation. The text as writing, requiring reading and therefore interpretation, is an essential dimension of hermeneutics and the point, according to the author, where hermeneutics and Translation Studies meet. In seeking to describe understanding and the concept of ‘meaning,’ hermeneutic philosophy, for the author, can contribute to the epistemological foundation of Translation Studies.