This paper examines the popular view that translation is about words, moving on to show how the ‘matter’ behind the words is the essence in translation. Treading the slippery slope of associating language – or words – and thought, he argues that context is only rarely backgrounded as in the case of aphorisms. By their nature generic, universal and minimally contextual, aphorisms exhibit a high degree of translatability precisely because the words they contain follow closely their prototypical dictionary definitions. In most other types of text, however, context is foregrounded, since “meanings are funnelled through specific textual contexts”. Neubert illustrates the importance of context in deciding the translation of words with reference to notices and titles. The translation of the title in John Updike’s short story Slippage is discussed in the linguistic context of the metaphors, literal usages, and mutations of words in the text and narrative context of the character of the story’s anti-hero.