This paper posits archives as a much broader medium to include translator’s notes, where a translator or a group of translators document the interpretive and linguistic decisions they made during the translation process as they introduce the text and the author to its foreign readers. Translator’s notes, a paratextual component often preceding the translation, not only enhances readers’ engagement with the text but also provides context for the decisions made by the translators. The paper reassesses the role of these notes beyond their obvious, practical function by drawing a relation between the work done by the agents of translation, such as translators, editors, publishers etc., and by archivists. The paper takes Turkish author Refik Halid Karay’s Gurbet Hikayeleri (Stories of Exile), translated collaboratively at a workshop and published in 2022 by Translation Attached, a publishing house focusing on Turkish literature in Canada, as its case study. The translator’s notes in this collection is written by the editors, who also contributed to the translation, and appear in the book along with other paratextual components such as acknowledgements, a note on the translators’ collective and another on language use and pronunciation. The translator’s note was later substantiated by a blogpost on the publisher’s website where one of the editors/translators expanded on why the translators chose “exile” to translate the word gurbet. All of these efforts to capture and justify the translators’ decisions in extra-textual, supporting materials reflect archivists’ efforts to (re)order, describe, catalogue and make accessible the material in hand. Drawing on this observation, the paper asks: what does a translator’s notes aspire to preserve for the book’s afterlife in a different cultural and linguistic context, specifically for its English-reading audience? What kind of power, if any, does a translator’s note yield? Could the translator’s note be seen as an ideological intervention in the reception of the book? To answer these questions, the paper focuses on the parts from the translator’s notes in Karay’s book, where the translators/editors contemplate how they tackled Arabic words and sentences that saturate Karay’s work. The paper maintains that the translators’ decision to preserve the linguistic hybridity of the text by keeping Arabic instances without translating them into English yet explaining them in the attached glossary serves to preserve Karay’s exilic memory. The translator’s notes as a repository for preserving linguistic and exilic memory will be expanded on in the context of broadening the scope of archives.