The pedagogies that are currently being put forward within a broad multilingual paradigm in languages education endorse the general principle that learning is a collaborative and dialogic process engaging learners and teachers as partners that bring diverse linguistic, cultural and other knowledge into the classroom. The plurilingual approach to modern languages education adopted by the Council of Europe at the turn of the century is in line with the multilingual orientation embraced by educational linguists in the wake of migration and displacement on a global scale. This article deals with the implementation of the plurilingual approach in higher education, by focusing on the use of a particular type of cross-linguistic mediation in language teaching, namely written translation. Firstly, the article investigates how pedagogic translation is conceived of in applied linguistics. Secondly, it gives two examples of how translation is becoming an integral part of language teaching and testing in European universities. The concluding section contains some recommendations for future research.