Scientific technical communication has made technical translation a much more promising area for theoretical and empirical investigation than it was previously assumed by scholars in the field of Translation Theory. Technical language is field specific, and the needs of each particular discipline determine the prevailing trends in coinage and development of terminology. Contemporary terms do not always meet the traditional requirements put forward by conventional terminology schools often being polysemic, metaphoric, and context-dependent. Therefore, background knowledge necessary to determine meaning in context and the relations between meaning and context as an interactive process that promotes cognition and communication, both intralingual and interlingual, are the focus of attention of the present article. The present article aims at the discussion of the integral aspects of background knowledge of a technical translator. The empirical data, obtained from the source texts in English has been analysed. The main conclusion is that in order to ensure accurate and acceptable translation of a technical text, translators should not only have relevant linguistic competence, but should be also aware of all the integral aspects of the constantly changing contemporary text environment, i.e. linguistic, social, field-specific, situational, cultural and individual contexts.