This paper is an attempt to investigate translator behaviour from a psychological angle, taking account of the fact that translation – here understood as a process rather than as a product of translational activities – is a complex undertaking requiring a frame of mind which is aware of three fundamental conceptual pillars: context, culture, and compensation. Apart from discussing translation in the frame work of general cognitive psychology, we must focus in our approach on the specification of information processing factors that are instrumental in: (a) learning how to behave cognitively when one is confronted with a novel or a familiar translation situation; (b) planning what operations have to be executed in a specific environmental context; and (c) executing them on the basis of repertoire of knowledge and skills which shows that behaviour-in-context is practically always the result of the organized functioning of both cognitive (problem-solving-oriented) and non-cognitive (associative) processes.