This paper interrogates the role translation could play in making it possible to address problematic customs and taboo issues specifically relevant to women and yet ignored as matters of human rights. The invisibility of translation understood as a mere teaching exercise enabled Charrière to create a space where she and the young Isabelle de Gélieu could consider the plight of single mothers within terms specific to the Enlightenment at a time when the heated debates in the village of Colombier clearly indicated that such an issue had no chance of being rationally articulated in public.