This essay places Anglo-American Cultural Studies in an international context, specifically, that of Translation Studies degrees in contemporary Europe. It explores the conditions under which Cultural Studies can be relevant to professionally oriented Translation Studies. The discussion goes on to interrogate the ways in which Cultural Studies and Translation Studies intersect, with the help of a reading of the novel by the Australian translator, academic, critic and novelist Robert Dessaix, Night Letters (1996), and its German translation, Briefe aus der Nacht (1997). The cultural conflicts and tensions typically examined by Cultural Studies, and exemplified in Dessaix’ novel and its translations provide the basis for the concluding discussion on the models of subjective agency which a novel inter/cultural studies can offer students of Translation Studies today.