This study aims to describe the translators who had book-length translations published in Taiwan during the period from 1945 to 1965. Taiwan had been a colony of Japan for half a century until 1945, thus few native Taiwanese could speak Mandarin or write modern Chinese based on Mandarin in the late 1940s. Books in modern Chinese, including translations, had to be imported from the mainland then. Unfortunately, after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, translations by living translators in China became illegal according to the Martial Law of Taiwan. To avoid violating martial law restrictions, Taiwanese publishers were forced to either publish these “illegal” translations anonymously or under fabricated names. Until 1965, there were more than 200 ghost translators (living translators in Communist China) who had works circulated in Taiwan. Most of these translations were first printed in China in the 1930s and 1940s. Some well-known translators in China thus became ghost translators in Taiwan for decades, even after the lift of the Martial Law in 1987. Exiled translators, who came to Taiwan with the KMT government in the late 1940s, were the second biggest group after the ghost translators. Some translators were established before 1949, others began their careers as translators during their exile. Most exiled translators were either teachers in universities or high-schools, or employees of the army, government or state-run enterprises, including media. Very few native Taiwanese published translations before 1965. This study finds that from 1945 to 1965, 97% of the translators in Taiwan’s published translations either lived in China (ghost translators) or came from China (exiled translators). Native Taiwanese only constituted 3% of the translators. It is obvious that without knowing the ghost translators and the context of their works, the field of translation history in Taiwan remains a chaotic mess. To clarify the history distorted by politics is the first step to understand the formation and shift of translation norms in Taiwan.