This paper reports on the findings of an empirical inquiry that links translation studies and research on language acquisition/attrition by considering the interpretation of overt pronominal subjects, formerly found to be problematic in both domains. The focus is on the resolution of intra-sentential anaphora and cataphora in Italian by two groups of native speakers, English–Italian trainee translators and a control group of non-translators. The participants did a picture selection task in which they had to identify the antecedents of third person null and overt subject pronouns in ambiguous anaphoric and cataphoric conditions. Contrary to what was anticipated based on former work, suggesting that translators undergo a form of first language attrition due to extended exposure to a second language, trainee translators did not display evidence of overt pronoun overgeneralization (i.e. second language impact). In fact, they chose pragmatically unfit antecedents to a lesser extent than the control group, leading to the conclusion that in language comprehension, metalinguistic awareness can override other influences affecting translators.