Manuel Chrysoloras, the revered teacher of Greek of humanists such as Leonardo Bruni, Guarino Veronese and Francesco Filelfo, is often hailed as the founding father of humanist theory of translation. In my article I analyse the short description of his views on translation that we have from his student, Cencio de' Rustici. I shall argue that although he did influence later translators profoundly, Chrysoloras did not advocate the kind of radically domesticating translation that many of his pupils saw as the ideal.