The answer is C: the meanings of the author´s words.
When translating, it is recommended, above all, that one captures the ideas, sense, and meaning —or, as many have put it, in more poetic terms, capture the spirit of the text— of what is being expressed in the original. Even if the task of the translator then becomes extremely difficult —some would say, like de Mann or Walter Benjamin, impossible— it is, as such, an enterprise worth pursuing.
