Based on the premises that reading comprehension is an essential requisite for the exercise of translation, and considering that, in practice, most of the translation students do not fully address it, this article presents a review of the different proposals of the definition of translation competence, in order to verify the presence and, therefore, the importance of reading comprehension. Likewise, the characteristics of the translator-reader are addressed in order to account for his features that differentiate him from the common reader. According to this review, a series of didactic activities, based on the learning objectives for the comprehension of texts proposed by Brehm & Hurtado (1999) are presented in this paper, allowing the translator-apprentice to achieve the necessary understanding required in the practice of translation.