Burkina Faso is a west African country with 22 million inhabitants on 274 000 km2. It is home to 59 local languages in addition to French the official and former colonial language. With about 80% of illiterate people and an official language spoken by a minority, translation and interpreting have always been very common in the country, in formal as well as informal contexts in various forms, orally, in writing and with signs. Here, we are considering any transfer from one language to the other. Despite the fact that translation and interpreting were largely practiced, they were not formally recognized and taught as subjects in their own rights. They appeared in the name of a department (department of translation and interpreting) in 1996 at the then faculty of arts which included other departments such as “lettres modernes” (French language and literature), linguistics (on local languages structures), anglophone studies, communication, German studies, language applied to tourism and business. The following lines provide a historical account of the department of translation and interpreting at Université Joseph KI-ZERBO, its programme, achievements, evolution, the challenges it faced and the perspectives. In addition to Université Joseph KI-ZERBO, the school of national administration also started three years ago a training programme of court translators and interpreters. This paper will also give account of this school as well as some private initiatives in the field of translation teaching.