Translation Studies remains an interdisciplinary field, making good use of new insights in other linguistic disciplines. The present paper gives an overview of the problems of ready-made language, drawing on developments in second language acquisition, lexicology and sociolinguistics, and evaluating the translation of non-literary texts from all these different points of view. The paper argues that routinization is an important feature of non-literary texts, while overstepping the limits of routinization may lead to jargon and translationese respectively. It also maintains that, since the use of ready-made language enables translation to be more efficient in terms of the effort invested, the training of non-literary translators should equip translators with a phraseological competence enabling them to use ready-made language effectively and to evaluate ready-made language from the sociolinguistic point of view. The paper also reports on a pilot experiment demonstrating some of the effects of such a phraseological competence.