This article explores the relationship between translation and culture in terms of identity of both the original and the target cultures. In considering this relationship the article will refer to the practice of medieval Arab translators to see how they handled the cultural gap in their translations from many languages, but mainly Greek, and how they brought their 'new' Arab-Islamic culture to bear on relations between themselves and the old linguistic and cultural traditions of the Greek. The article discusses the politics of translation as a mediator between two opposing systems of belief (paganism and pantheism of the Greeks and the monotheism of Islam) and how this antagonism was handled, bearing in mind that Arab translators established a translation movement unprecedented in history.