Translational communication, in relevance theoretic terms, is interpretive language use, depending on a pre-existing text. Types of translation that cannot be regarded as interpretive still share the latter feature. Ordinary bilingual communication is descriptive language use, i.e. it represents independent text production. Both types of communication involve the use of two languages, and this fact may account for similar phenomena appearing in both types of communication.The present study surveys parallels between proposed translation universals and similar features of bilingual communication, which we may tentatively call language contact universals. The present paper hypothesizes that both kinds of universals (or general features) are likely to be manifestations of universals of constrained communication. The main constraint on bilingual communication is the need to manage two languages. Linguistic uncertainty resulting from the parallel activation of two languages affects both bilingual and translational communication. In the latter, an additional constraint is the fact that it is interpretive language use. Both types of bilingual communication give rise to special language varieties (translated language and contact language varieties). Further research to confirm these hypotheses is called for.