The necessity of matching precise technical terms in two languages is often considered to be the main if not the only difficulty of technical translation. In this paper it is shown on the basis of an example that technical translation requires in addition to correct wording a sound understanding of the things meant by the text; cognitive complements play as important a role in technical translation as in other kinds of tranlsation. The difficulties of literary translation are often seen not in the transfer of meaning from one language to another but in the rendering of the intricacies of an author's language. A French translation of a short English poem shows the extent to which cogntive complements contribute to solving language problems in literary translation.