The article discusses the importance which had translators through the history of civilization in the transmission of values of universal cultural heritage. The author suggests the impossibility of fully translating the cultural phenomenon and accepts a more or less current perspective of perfect coincidence between language and culture, in order to analyze the translation as a complex phenomenon structured as a segmented pyramid, composed of four facets: translator(s), societ/y(ies), source language / culture and target language / culture. The author puts forward the hypothesis that follows societal priorities at different stages of development of civilizations, one of the four facets of the segmented pyramid stood at the base of translation activity, expressing the importance of each facet of the pyramid at different times, in different geographical areas. Another conclusion of the author is that there is no symmetry between the times and spaces as societal priorities of translation included in the pyramid. The method used by the author is called by itself thought geometry method, used in the past by the author in other studies on translation theory, terminology and sociolinguistics.