In the introductory part of this paper, the author first subsumes ‘translation competence’ under the general heading of ‘communicative competence’. Translation competence, he argues, is a specialized form of communicative competence. It is both knowing about translation and knowing how to do translation. A major objective of the paper is to discuss the nature of experience-driven knowledge of translation and to propose a model for its acquisition. The paper investigates the development of translation ability, variation in translation performance, translation and learning and other issues.