The Chinese translation program in the Faculty of Chinese has grown in size since the mid 2000s. However, many problems remain in terms of the quality of the education being provided. In particular, there exists the phenomenon that proficiency in foreign languages is considered in accord with the translation competence. In order to overcome the problem in this study, the conceptualization of translation competence, which is distinguished from foreign language capability through existing researches, has been suggested. At the beginning of the discussion of this issue, it was found that translation competence was regarded as bilingual proficiency. Later, competence was gradually perceived to be an interaction among the complicated sub-components that are distinguished from linguistic proficiency. Also, through interviews with instructors, this study explored the availability for application of perceived translation competence to the education of Chinese translation at the undergraduate level.