The aim of this paper is to examine the translation of a political and historical text on the French-African relations from French into Swedish, focusing on the translation of cultural reference and metaphor. The African context is relatively unknown to Swedish readers. This and other factors mean that some expressions and phenomena mentioned in the source text will need explanation in the translated text. This type of text also contains a large number of metaphors that may have to be adapted to the target text context.The analysis in this paper has been made using the author’s own translation of an extract of the essay book ”La France en Afrique – Cinq siècles de présence: vérités et mensonges” by Jean-Paul Gourévitch. A number of works dedicated to the translation of metaphors and cultural reference have been studied and theories applied to the translation of this particular source text.The main results of the study are firstly that Ogden & Richards triangle of reference will be particularly helpful to the translator when dealing with the issues of cultural reference and metaphor. Secondly, Vermeer’s skopos theory helps the translator make the text relevant and adapted to the reader’s needs. Thirdly, the target text structure is of importance.