The skopos theory of Reiss and Vermeer (1984;1996) has been criticized and defined by many national and international academics as 'a theory of libertinism', 'a machiavelist theory' or 'a theory without ethical principles'. The origin of its innumerable interpretations and misunderstandings comes from the confusion of its own terminology. The purpose of this article is to describe some of these misunderstandings in order to throw light onto the essence of the theory according to the authors' interpretation, by clarifying the terminology of its theoretical metalanguage. For this reason, the authors reflect on essential and obscure concepts of the theory such as 'function' and 'skopos' and consequently prove that behind the perspective of the “relativism” proposed by the theory, there are still some principles concerning 'equivalence'. The functional model of Hulst (1995), which is presented in the article, clarifies precisely several confusing conceptual aspects of the skopos theory.