A new linguistic-cognitive orientation in translation studies is important today because it can complement the current strong wave of socially and culturally oriented research into and around translation. For balance, it is also necessary and insightful to describe and explain how strategies of comprehending, decision-making and re-verbalisation come about in a translator’s bilingual mind. In this paper the author sketches some ideas about such a new linguistic-cognitive approach. She first reviews introspective and retrospective studies and behavioural experiments. Secondly, she assesses the value of neuro-linguistic studies for translation. Thirdly, she suggests a new combination of a translation theory and a neuro-functional theory of bilingualism.