The purpose of this paper is to consider language from a communicative approach, having texts within their social contexts as frame of reference. Indeed, the study of texts is of vital importance in analysing the way in which society organises communication, and how societies communicate with each other using different codes. Within this framework, the main problem the translator has to face is to assess the communicative purpose which the target text has to assume in order to meet the target-reader requirements, needs and expectations. In this sense, translations, as well as originals, are examples of social interaction. This article considers translation as a process occurring at a certain time, having a starting point, a certain duration and a result. Therefore, the different phases of the translation process as a part of interlinguistic communication are analysed.