Derivative potential of the text is its ability to establish primary/secondary relations to other texts. Ideas of derivative textology, applied to the theory of translation, are used in the article. A translated text is regarded as a secondary of the original one. It is created on the basis of the original text#s characteristics which are reproduced by means of a foreign language in a different culture.

The process of translation cannot be observed. It takes place in the interlocutors# minds. A text in a foreign language is a result of the encoding process and at the same time the first element of the decoding one. An interpreter is a bilingual person able to find correspondence between the texts in different languages. He can be defined as a producer of the text as well as the author and the addressee.

The conclusion is: a translated text, being secondary one, is a kind of encoded transformation which possesses a subjective feature # an interpreter#s activity # which determines its probabilistic character.