The objective of this article is five-fold. First the author demonstrates the influence that the understanding of metaphor has had on the praxis of translation. Second, he introduces and applies more recent insights in human conceptual processes, in particular those of image-schemas, conceptual metaphors and conceptual blends. Third, he introduces optimality principles and relates them to the suggested conceptual blends. Fourth, he presents some translations of conceptual blends and then suggests optimality principles for translating conceptual blends and evaluates the translations by them. Finally, he suggests areas that require further research.