The article positions the role of translation theory vis-à-vis the challenges of translation practice. After portraying its heterogeneous historical development and the ensuing compartimentalization of translation today, it argues that translation theory has developed a theoretical and methodological profile in the past twenty years as a useful resource for translation practice in the future. With the understanding that any discipline as a whole sustains its success only when operating on coherent concepts and methodologies, a possible common methodological ground for the complex dimensions of translation is outlined and discussed with special reference to what it can offer to the practice of literary translation. Against this background it is illustrated that conceptual and methodological coherence and transparency are not only useful standards when making and discussing literary translation decisions but are the essential backbone for the continued success of translation as a discipline.