This paper focuses on the image of cross-cultural translator par excellence, namely the self-translator. When facing a difficult task of translating his/her own literary work, the self-translator, who is also a bilingual and a bicultural author, is often free to do some changes in the process of his work’s translation. Even if he/she is the author of the original text many theorists consider such a phenomenon to be a betrayal of the original work. However, we dare to say that in this case it is a conscious manipulation of the original, a manipulation that allows understanding and reception of the text by two different people. Assuming the task of linguistic and cultural transcoding of his/her own work, the author-translator reflects his personal experiences in the both versions which are slightly tinted according to the language and the culture in which they are written. The idea is that when rendering his/her experiences into the both languages the self-translator becomes a cross-cultural mediator and establishes certain relationships between these cultures in the process of translation.