One of the defining characteristics of late medieval Anglo-French court culture on both sides of the Channel is its attention to the importance of the mean expressed as interest in mediation and moderation in vernacular literature, chronicles, and governance texts. This culture did not invent intercession, a long-standing social and political practice in medieval Europe, but it valorized intercession as essential to good governance and, in developing the lexis of the mean and mediation, placed intercession within a newly widened network of terms and thought. Late medieval Anglo-French ideas of the mean drew inspiration from a variety of sources, particularly from a renewed interest in classical philosophy. The choice of the vernacular for ideas that might earlier have fallen within the purview of Latin, the traditional language of governance and philosophy, marks a major shift. In both English and French, exposition of sociopolitical ideas was explicitly part of an ongoing discussion about the role of vernaculars in translatio studii – in disseminating valuable learning more widely than Latin could – and, by implication, in translatio imperii, a claim to inherit the cultural imperium associated with Rome and Latin. Within these twin contexts of Anglo-French interest in translation and the existence of a shared vernacular discourse of the mean, this essay limns the outlines of an argument about how French and English translators self-consciously adapt and make vernacular Aristotelian ideas for contemporary audiences.