Аннотация:Metatextual operators, or discourse markers, are used by narrators to comment on the process of telling the story, arranging the facts, choosing necessary words, expressing different points of view on the events. As investigations have shown, the number of these markers can vary significantly among different translated versions of the same text, and this variation can be traced from early translations to modern ones. Even in Old Church Slavonic translations of religious texts, where the interpreter followed the principle of word-by-word transmission, we find the addition of metatextual operators in order to focus the attention of the addressee. Modern translations display a variety of techniques for rendering the original metatext as it relates to athe style of the author, the genre of the text and the target audience. The article highlights the interrelations between metatext, time and modality in narrative, focusing on the changing images of the speaker and the addressee in early and modern translations.