Applying the theories of Steiner, Berman and Meschonnic who have defined what could be called a hermeneutic conception of translation, this article plays on the word "adaptation" to signify that the translation process results in the adaptation of a target language-culture to the source text. The adaptation-encounter-negotiation between two cultures which the translated text expresses is, to be sure, inflected since it produces a target text which displaces without replacing the source text and that it is the outcome of the strategic choices of a translator who is himself culturally placed. These are the two adaptative processes that the author intends to examine in connection with Heaney's recent translation of Beowulf in the light of some of the earlier translations. This study tries to demonstrate that the translation of canonical texts does not simply vary through time, it also opens them up in a process of constant expansion described by Benjamin.