Traditional notions of translation (T_N or ‘narrow translation’) have had a primary focus on text translation and how meaning can be preserved. This chapter employs an alternative semiotic understanding of translation (T_S or ‘semiotic translation’), as suggested by Kobus Marais, to demonstrate how it can be used to study inter-epoch changes in norm-directed practices and their conceptualizations, cross-cultural developments and interdisciplinary translations of concepts used to describe them. Friendship practices and their theoretical descriptions are used as a case to show the need for alternative understandings of translation processes. T_S occurs not only when texts are taken as signs of complex phenomena but also when a mode of life and the sociolinguistic practice of one generation or culture is interpreted and changed by its inheritors. To develop T_S as a general and theoretically more satisfying model, we investigate some of the processes involved in the inter-epoch conceptualizations and cross-cultural developments of friendship. Claiming that different friendship studies all contribute to knowledge of some aspects of ‘the same’ phenomenon demands the possibility of translations of ‘friendship’ as a word, concept, practice, interpersonal relationship, social bond, ideal, form of love, normative constraint, power relation or any other terms that have been used to characterize its phenomenology and dynamics. Analysing T_S translations of friendship across epochs (from Confucius and Aristotle through the following eras, up to modernity), cultures (worldwide) and languages demonstrates how the perspective of T_S helps us grasp ancient texts, their translations and cross-cultural friendship performances better without forcing upon the material our late-modern perspectives and norms. It is suggested that frames (from artificial intelligence and philosophy of science) can be an analytic tool for studying T_S processes. Finally, some challenges to be resolved in further research are outlined.