There exist several recent approaches that leverages the use of model transformations during software development. The existence erent kinds of models, at different levels of abstraction, involves the necessity of transferring knowledge from one model to another. This framework can also be applied in the context of metadata management for database evolution, in which transformations are needed both to translate schemata from one level to another and to modify existing schemata. In this paper we introduce the notions of translation rule and elementary translation which are used within a forward database maintenance strategy.