This article engages with three translations into English of Lacan's essay « La Signification du phallus ». Issues pertaining to the practice of translation as a discipline are contextualised and discussed through parallel readings of Lacan as rendered by Alan Sheridan, Juliet Mitchell and Bruce Fink. Borrowing from Lawrence Venuti's work in the field, I propose that lexical variants afford insight into historical processes which inflect the translator's choice of signifier, positioning the translator as witness and recorder of a linguistic conjuncture which inscribes its norms, standards and values into the fabric of the translated text.