The core purpose of translation teaching is to develop students' translation competence. Translation teaching can be centered on practicing multiple translations of sentences with proper concern for textual cohesion and coherence, and a “Trilogy of Optimization Pedagogy” (TOP) can be applied to decrease translation errors and obtain quality translations step by step. The three phases of optimization are as follows: firstly, to practice making multiple versions of the same source sentence from various perspectives until the most satisfactory ones are obtained; secondly, to practice looking back and forth within larger textual combinations to evaluate critically and penetratingly those different versions for clumsiness or harshness whatsoever in each; and thirdly, to practice refining cohesion and coherence in larger textual combinations so as to create a final target text with holistically optimal quality, style, and effect. Students’ awareness of continuous optimization can be gradually developed and consolidated in these procedures, and three important translation competences, namely sentence-generating competence, critical evaluation competence, and text-refining competence, can be effectively improved by following this TOP model.