This paper sets out to outline the psycholinguistic profile of the bilingual as revealed by studies on bilingualism, and the author tries to make some suggestions as to how one might better harness bilingualism in developing translation competence. The paper focuses on aspects of bilingualism and the relationship between bilingual competence and translation competence. She argues that, contrary to popular belief by lay persons, untrained bilingual competence is not sufficient to guarantee translation competence. On the other hand, translation competence is not simply an improved bilingual competence.