This paper attempts to understand the role of translation in the transmission and spread of theory outside the cultural field where it was first formulated. To reveal this role, it takes as an example the social poetics formulated by Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin starting in the 1920s. It focuses on the translations of Moroccan critic Mohammed Barada of some of Bakhtin's texts (published as "Novelistic Discourse" in 1987). The paper concludes that Barada's reception of Bakhtin's suggestions, particularly the concepts of the dialogic, polyglossia, the carnivalesque, and polyphony, opened up for the Arab novelist-critic opportunities for innovation on the levels of method and practice, so as to emerge from the closed circling of reading.