The article considers the possibilities of a competence-building approach while training translation. The translator’s competences emphasized by the researchers were analyzed and the grounds for their systemizing were offered. The conducted analysis permitted to distinguish the following key competences of the translator: intercultural, special, social and personal ones. The authors have established that operational and cognitive skills are obtained and formed in the process of training and perfected in the further translation activity while experience and social skills, physiological and emotional resources are manifested and perfected only in the process of a professional activity. The formation of translator’s key competences takes place at all the stages of this complicated activity when fulfilling certain actions by the translator as a member of a definite professional team acting in a certain professional environment. Moreover, the pragmatic approach permitted to distinguish the main stages of training corresponding to the translator’s stages of activity. The practical value of the research is that the systemizing of the translator’s competences will permit to arrange their nomenclature and to elaborate the unique requirements for their formation. © 2016 Gavrilenko.