Beyond language transfer, translation is a cognitive experience of alterity whose effects are existential, rather than symbolic. It is a fiduciary action, an entrustment, that carries with a danger of confiscation and censure whenever it is based on an assymetrical relationship between languages, cultures, or alterities involved. Hence the exorbitant power and responsibility of the translator, yet concealed for centuries by the various images of submission and fidelity. What are the objects and subjects of alterity that emerge from studies on translation? Which paradigms or models take shape around these alterities? Which ends induce the practices which then inform these models? Given the diversity of all these issues, depending on the historical periods, the institutional settings, and the theoretical framework within which they have been conceived to date, this study can only present a selective overview of how the problems of alterity have shaped our dominant representations and practices of translation.