Plurilingual face-to-face collaboration becomes increasingly important in the academic world, due to the rapid development of international networks. One means for managing plurilingual encounters is informal oral translation, carried out by participants when the need arises. A conversation analysis of translation sequences in scientific meetings shows that researchers translate not only to establish intercomprehension, but also in order to emphasize elements of discourse and to state argumentative positions. Rather than being a mere transposition from one language into another, translation thus shapes the contents being developed. Moreover, it allows a description of some form of exploitation of linguistics resources in a particular social activity.