Translation has made a comeback with its positive impact on students' language performance. Nevertheless, the results of the use of translation are still limited compared to other types of language exercises, which should be related to structural and behaviorist approaches to translation. Translation courses are usually part of the Tertiary English Major Curriculum, which aims to improve students' knowledge and skills in English and translation skills. Against the backdrop of limited translation teaching in Vietnam, this report presents the adoption of a functional approach to translation in translation teaching and introduces insights from professional translator training to develop students' language and translation competences. The first part of the report illustrates the effectiveness of the functional approach to translation which was evaluated through a contrastive examination of a qualitative analysis of students' written and spoken reflections on the translation tasks and students' translation solutions to some selected source text items both before and after translation workshops on aspects of the translation process (text analysis, translation strategies, and reflection). The study carried out at the University of Foreign Language Studies - the University of Da Nang (UFLS-UD) found that after the workshops, the students' awareness of the translation process was enhanced in terms of their more frequent mentions of non-linguistic translation problems, their broadened repertoire of translation strategies, and their reflections on the notions of "accuracy" and/or a "good" translation from a functional perspective. At the same time, the students were able to widen their understanding of language and the features that influence the translation process. It was noted that after the workshops, the students' increased awareness of the translation process and communicative aspects of language use positively affected their informed and functionally appropriate translations as well as developed their confidence in translating and independence as learners. The second part of the report discusses practical implications in the teaching of language and translation including the adoption of a communicative view of language and translation, text analysis, text selection, translation briefs, process-based and project-based approaches as well as translation evaluation.