This paper proposes that Meschonnic's writing, and particularly his writing on translation, does not do justice to the richly suggestive conceptual framework he constructs around the notion of ‘discourse’. It is perhaps peculiarly translation, at least in the version canvassed here, that reveals what is insufficiently developed and too defensively protected in Meschonnic's thinking about discourse, rhythm and related concepts. This is, then, an attempt to better understand, within a critique of Meschonnic's albeit wonderfully enriching vision of translation, not only what distinguishes rhythm as it acts in discourse, from rhythm as it acts in translation, but also what rhythm's relation with orality and vocal values is, and how translation might translate across those values.