This paper examines the metalanguage employed in two theoretical approaches to translation – the polysystem theory of Itamar Even-Zohar, formulated to analyse translation into Hebrew in the early 20th century, and the work of the Syrian critic Muhammad Kamel al-Khatib in his study of literary translation into Arabic in the late 19th and early 20th century. Despite parallel conceptual frameworks, the terminology each used reflected different ideological attitudes. Through a comparative analysis of these two approaches, the paper investigates the influence of translation metalanguage on research methodologies. The author’s intention is to demonstrate that the choice of terms is not a purely technical matter; it reflects and affects ideological positions. It is further argued that the multiplicity of terminological systems in translation studies, even when designating more or less ‘similar’ phenomena, is not a symptom of fragmentation, but an inevitable, even a healthy, situation.