In spite of the progress made over recent years in translation teaching in the Mainland of China and Hong Kong, some of the fundamental problems remain. Often the academia is divided in opinion on whether a university degree programme in translation should be focused on the ‘education’ or the 'training' of students, whether different types of degree programmes in translation should be taught differently or in more or less the same way, or whether a postgraduate programme in translation should follow on from an undergraduate programme in translation or whether it should be completely different. This paper is then an attempt to tackle such issues. Maintaining the argument that translation teaching in degree programmes in translation at the tertiary level is it is both training and education, and very often more education than training, the paper emphasizes the need to take into full considerati n the holistic development of students in their education as translator/translation specialist. Most essential to the argument are the concepts of 'whole-person translator education' and the 'translator-development pyramid'. These concepts as well as issues on the various kinds of translation competences that are integrated to create a 'whole person' in the translation student, are analysed and discussed, so that light would be shed on the development of an innovative model for translation teaching in university degree programmes in translation.
