This essay aims to approach regionalist literature with a view to the issue of untranslatability, a concept addressed by Bárbara Cassin in Éloge de la traduction. Considering the problems of acclimatizing realism, as well as the strong criticisms of national literary historiography regarding the problem of language in regionalism, this essay addresses the topic from three fronts: 1) mapping the vision of national literary historiography; 2) the problem of acclimatizing realism; 3) translation as an interpretative possibility through the concept of untranslatability. The hypothesis is that thinking about regionalism as a translation, whether of European realism, countryside, or hinterland, re-elaborates the perennial dialectic between form and content, cultured narrator and illiterate character, and metropolis and colony.