This study is aimed to give shape to the notion of “translation as a model/metaphor of cross-cultural understanding”. I started this paper with a description of what I, an ethnic Han researcher, called the “error and shock” events in my fieldwork with Rukai tribal communities in southern Taiwan. These ethnographic happenings led to the realization that disputes regarding the meanings of cultural tradition existed not only in cross-cultural encounters, but also among indigenous informants themselves. I then made a close reading of literature works done by a local Rukai informant, Auvini kadresengan, a free-lance writer devoted himself to record Rukai cultural tradition through various writing genres of report, poetry, essay and fiction. As such, Auvini kadresengan’s literature works could be regarded as self-report ethnography. The highlight of this paper was to juxtapose my fieldwork with Auvini kadresengan’s writings and envision them as dialogue to illuminate what it took to establish cross-cultural understanding. The dialogical arrangement was not merely a juxtaposition of concepts or categories, isolated from their social contexts. A conversation between two people always involves a third dimension, that is, the mediation of the embedded or unconscious cultural structures in language, terminologies, non-verbal codes of behavior, and assumptions about what constitutes the imaginary, real, and symbolic. Accordingly, I emphasized that aspects of language and cultural context are essential to the production, circulation and reception of indigenous literature, which can be embodied and labeled as “translation as a model/metaphor of cross-cultural understanding”. Approaching indigenous literature as mediator of cross-cultural understanding, I interwove mine and Auvini kadresengan’s ethnographic texts to indicate that every culture always includes the other and its boundary can be widened through cross-cultural dialogue. The “error and shock” events involving misunderstanding is unavoidable in the beginning of cross-cultural encounter. Nonetheless, it is also a prerequisite to reach mutual understanding if dialogue is to be continued.