This empirical study in Cognitive Translation Studies investigated potential effects of translation direction on the translation process, the effort and the product. It focused on the German-English language pair and included qualified specialised translation professionals as participants. In a simulated workplace setting, their translation processes were monitored and analysed following a mixed methods approach. The translations were then compared applying an extensive set of process descriptors, indicators of translation effort and a user-centred product evaluation. Results showed no statistically significant directionality effects for the vast majority of the process descriptors and effort indicators or for product quality.