ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the resources of genre and second language acqui sition theory in at attempt to come to an understanding of the way that grammar is deployed by second language translators to make texts. The central proposition is that a target language system can be identified and used as a yardstick against which the developing competence of transla tors can be measured. The yardstick is based on the work of Douglas Biber, to which I will devote a fairly solid introduction later.
