This thesis aims at an in-depth investigation of the signifying aspect of translation. The investigation is articulated in four parts in which different interdisciplinary approaches are critically exploited. The proposed conception of translation as meaning assignment is constructed out of a synthesis of the critical insights arrived at in the succeeding stages of the analysis. The first part starts with a critique of the standard conception of translation as recoding process. Seen from the viewpoint of Eco’s theory of codes, the recoding model proves to be inadequate, for it fails to take into consideration the hermeneutic depth of translation. A preliminary application of Eco’s theory of codes brings to the fore the intertwinement between the interpretive and the signifying aspects of translation. There occurs then the need for a semiotic description that will portray translation not as an exchange of messages but as a hermeneutic dialogue. Thus, in the second part there is a shift in focus from codes to interpretation and intercultural communication. From this new perspective, translation appears as a sequence of interdependent interpretive moves performed in a thick web of significations. The process of translation is each time performed from within the translator’s hermeneutic horizon but it yields the translated text when a real fusion of horizons is reached. Translation as meaning assignment always presupposes a fusion of horizons.