This paper deals with the issue of translation as metaphor of postcolonial era, i.e. an era shaped by globalization processes and large migration movements. These processes press for, mostly impose, a sort of «second socialization» which firstly involves people who migrate. However, those unavoidable intercultural relations will never be properly as such if this second socialization does not cross also «us», the natives, the inhabitants of those countries which receive migrants. The mutual translation among different languages and cultures plays a preponderant role in the current world. Starting from Walter Benjamin, this paper, in the first part, goes trough some theoretical dimensions of the concept of translation which bring to argue that not everything is translatable and «that particular convergence» which, according to Benjamin, characterizes translation is not always easy to achieve. In the second part, the paper presents Fatema Mernissi's exemplary narrative reflection which some how stages a translation process, by contrasting male fantasies, «eastern» and «western», and the different social constructions of harem.