This paper explores the rationale of translation and constraints faced by translators in a South-North context of circulation. Common theories assume that translation, especially of literature coming from peripheral spaces of the literary world, are political acts of building bridges between cultures. Interviews with two dozen American translators of North African literature (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, from French and Arabic) lead to qualify this assumption. If not absent, politics appears to be a secondary reason for action. Their motivation for translating is constrained by their main profession, language from which they translate, and reputation in the field. Three types are distinguished: the Male Arabic Scholar, the Francophile Writer, and the Woman Professional Translator. Translators are also constrained by the publishing houses. Anecdotes of refusals by the latter are indeed telling, and show that politics reside sometimes more in rejections than in choices. Despite the political good will the translators might have in favor of a more diverse literary market in the USA, the outcome is limited, as revealed by an original bibliographical database of 350 North African books translated into English since 1970. It shows that literature translated in the USA reinforces the weight of male writers, French language, and of linguistic areas capitals (Paris and Beirut), when compared to the structure of the local literary field (as described by another database on 2000 books published by Algerian writers in the 1990s).