This paper deals with the main semantic and syntactic properties of the verb traduire ‘to translate’ and of the noun traduction ‘translation’. First, the different meanings of these two words will be outlined, in French and in other languages; it will be shown that the Husserlian notion of “ideal object” is essential to give a real account of the linguistic properties of the noun traduction when it denotes a text translated from one language into another; furthermore, the notion of ideality is important for the study of many nouns of music or language and might be extended to the domain of fine arts.