In Gideon Toury's conceptual map of Translation Studies, the transition form theoretical and descriptive study to translator training, translation aids and translation criticism is not direct but occurs through the establishment of 'bridging rules' by practitioners. Corpus-based research into the universals of translation is strengthening the pivotal role of description in Translation Studies through the development of an explicit, coherent methodology and the acquisition of new knowledge about translational behaviour, without necessarily paying attention to such bridging rules. At the same time, however, teachers of translation are independently drawing on the insights of corpus-based Descriptive Translation studies and would seems to be aiming, in the long term, to formulate bridging rules that postulate what translator trainees should be doing if they adhere to the patterns of translational behaviour unveiled by descriptive scholars. Here we examine the main features and achievements of corpus-based Descriptive Translation Studies and then focus on the integration of corpus-based description into translator training and translation quality assessment, with particular reference to the role played by universals in applied research carried out in the specialized translation classroom.