Some readers prefer an earlier translation in which they encounter a source text over later versions which they obsessively denigrate or reject, revealing a fixation. They transcend membership in specific linguistic communities by valuing readability construed as an indication of greater equivalence. They thus assume an instrumental model of translation, understanding it as reproducing or transferring an invariant contained in or caused by the source text. Their fixation is illuminated through the intersubjective relations in which they encounter the preferred translation. A literary representation enables an incisive account: Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Pnin (1957), discloses an identity-forming process that can be deepened with Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “object a.” The instrumentalism underpinning the fixation deserves consideration because it effectively denies or stops cultural change, innovative interpretation, the very practice of translation.