Having laid the groundwork by briefly introducing the development from interlingual comparison of translations to intertextual comparisons that see the translation as grounded in its TL polysystem set, and having indicated one particular mode in which the system may act, the paper looks into how this approach can be applied to describing what has happened in Stuart Gilbert’s translation into English of André Malraux’s La Voie royale. The analysis to be attempted is doubly symbolic since the author’s first use of the translation was as an exemplification of the linguistic taxonomy of Vinay and Darbelnet: La Voie royale provided an excellent supply of illustrations of the workings of such translation techniques as modulation and transposition. Gilbert’s translation would seem to be an uncanny anticipation of the work of Vinay and Darbelnet, or rather, since that cannot be the case, provides solid justification from professional translation practice for their later work.