The article deals with the specific model of translation of cultural codes in the 20th century Balkan literature and art. The author highlights explications of translation of various kinds: the motif of the crossing-bridge and the scheme of the narrator-mediator in I. Andrich’s prose, border forms in the South Slavic art of the neo-avant-garde of the 1960s (the group “Medial”), the multilevel borderzone in D. Ugreshich’s prose, problematic communication in visual concepts of Christo. The general strategy of translation-as a-transfer demonstrates an antinomy of the Balkan model of the world: the translation as a bridge designed to connect here divides the participants in the communicative process. The texts of different classes and poetic systems are marked with extremes: “translation” is implemented in the range from metaphorical silence to over-communication.