In his work Daniel Simeoni gave prominence to the practice of the translator. Taking this as my point of departure, I analyze the practices of Louis-Mathieu Langlès, curator of Oriental manuscripts at the National Library in Paris from 1792 to 1824, and founder in 1795 of the École spéciale des langues orientales vivantes, where he was the administrator and professor of Persian until his death in 1824. Langlès held a central position in French Orientalism as it was developing in Paris at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In his numerous publications, which included many reviews, biographical notices, editions and translations, Langlès systematically engages with the authors whose work he is translating or presenting, reacting to and supplementing their texts with copious notes, notices, discourses, memoirs, and other forms of paratextual materials. Far from adopting a subservient position, Langlès positions himself as an equal. His publications received both high praise and strong criticism from critics and reviewers, an indication of the changes taking place within the discipline, and the personal tensions these at times involved, as Orientalism evolved towards a more scientific, and eventually a more philological, approach.