ABSTRACT
This chapter is principally about textual competence. It is woven around several of the themes that shape this book, including the themes of discourse and levels of competence. A key argument is that one of the aspects of translation competence is competence in the target language, and specifically at the level of text or discourse; that is, part of learning to translate into a second language is learning to write in a stylistically authentic way. This chapter begins by developing this argument, relying on insights from the field of written versus spoken language. In essence, the concerns of translation competence studies are limited by the typical genres encountered by professional translators - official prose, adminis trative texts, and so on. A major element in the pedagogy of translation is to teach students to create texts like these in a second language. Textual competence is the element o f translation competence that such pedagogy addresses.
