The paper presents a comparison of different approaches within translation process research (TPR). The mind-as-a-computer view, which has led to both mechanistic and functional explanations of translation as a process , including semantic notions of meaning, unrealistic constructs of the mental lexicon, and reified notions of equivalence is contrasted with a series of approaches that draw from 4EA cognition and view meaning as inherently encyclopedic in nature. In addition, such approaches suggest that the mental lexicon is only an abstraction of a part of (world-) knowledge; and that the tendency to choose default translations rest on the structure of the brain/mind and the minimax principle.