The present dissertation analyses a legal concept: that literary, artistic and scientific translations involve an act of transformation and, for that reason, consist in an authorial (re)writing. It briefly shows the influence of the Enlightenment and Romanticism on the consolidation of the authorial rights on the nineteenth century, when the concept of original work (or originality) became central in the copyright laws. In dialogue with Lawrence Venuti, an important translation theorist, it also examines whether the centrality of the original work in the copyright legislation really contributed to obscure translation and consequently cause the translator’s invisibility. The present dissertation also tries to find basis for the idea of translation as transformation through the interaction of philosophy and linguistic studies, still exploring this subject in a very introductory manner. In this part of the work, it is also suggested that the formulation of a new concept of language, at the end of 18th century, might have been very relevant to the idea of translation as transformation, influencing the laws of that time.