This paper investigates ‘translatio’ in an attempt to recover the generic meaning of German ‘Translation’. Therefore, the author introduces the original Latin word ‘translatio’ into English. It stands for the two Realisationsformen, or modes of realization, of bilingually mediated communication: translation and interpreting. The purpose of this paper is not about the differences between translation and interpreting; the objective is to discover what ‘languaging’ features they have in common. The paper is an attempt at a detailed feature analysis of ‘translatio’ in its varied realizations. In abstracting from these particulars, the author aims to single out a number of features that can shed light on a unique type of human communicative activity, which has so far evaded the limelight of the cognitive sciences. Doubling/mediating, rephrasing at a distance, displaced situationality, bilingual and multilingual intertextuality, derived creativity, and expanded pragmatic directedness.