This article recapitulates the didactic experience of an international translation project, which, with its focus on literary translation, demonstrated the importance of project-based learning in the field of South Slavic cultural and literary studies, and specifically for the BCMS language acquisition. The DAAD 2023-funded project „Im Osten viel Neues! Students translate youth literature about peace and war“ was a cooperation between the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Halle and the Departments of German Studies at the universities in Nikšić (Montenegro) and Novi Sad (Serbia). The highlight of the project was a summer school with translation workshops in Cetinje (Montenegro), in which students from all three Universities took part, translated and discussed, benefitting from the multilingual group work as well as from the co-teaching seminar and the expertise of invited guests. Our project represents an innovative possibility of language teaching, opening also space for theoretical considerations on the relevance of youth literature and culture for the university-specific learning in the fields of South Slavic studies and Southeast European studies. Besides the conception of the very project, we introduced the corpus of fictional works we consulted, both Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav ones, while the strategies of student translation practices are discussed in the students’ report papers.