This article presents the results obtained in a pilot test, which was the first stage of an experimental study on translation competence acquisition in translator training in the language pair Japanese-Spanish. The study is part of the research on translation competence acquisition conducted by the PACTE group from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Five trainee translators in the fourth year of the Universidad de Salamanca’s Translation and Interpreting degree programme and whose second foreign language was Japanese participated in the pilot test. The test’s objectives were (1) to refine our selection of study variables and their respective indicators; (2) to determine the appropriateness of the instruments (text and questionnaires) used; (3) to determine the appropriateness of the rich points (prototypical translation problems) chosen; and (4) to make progress in correction criteria for these rich points. The results showed that our selected text, rich points (although we removed two and added a new one), study variables and indicators (we removed just one indicator), and questionnaires (which we modified only slightly) were appropriate.