Living cells require the continuous production of proteins by the ribosomes. Any problem enforcing these protein factories to stall during mRNA translation may then have deleterious cellular effects. To minimize these defects, eukaryotic cells have evolved dedicated surveillance pathways: non-stop decay (NSD), no-go decay (NGD) and non-functional 18S-rRNA decay (18S-NRD). Recent studies support a general molecular framework for these surveillance pathways, the mechanisms of which are intimately related to translation termination.