This paper deals with translation and terminology and/or phraseology with regard to scientific popularisation and focuses on the production of original French texts on the Human Genome as opposed to French translations from English. If metaphors found in translated documents are for the most part similar or exactly the same as those in the original French texts, perhaps they can be seen as universal. On the other hand, if metaphors in the translations differ from the ones in the source language, then the English language could be considered as influencing the French translations in scientific popularization, and decisions must be made. In LSP, metaphors are mostly used as cognitive tools. But even translation pedagogy scholars can’t tell how these metaphors could be rendered, offering only the warning that in pragmatic translation, one may (1) use the same metaphor as in the source text, (2) choose or create a new metaphor, or (3) use no metaphor at all.