A number of translation scholars and educators have begun to argue that the training of translators and interpreters should include preparation not only for the market but also for society – for the concrete ethical dilemmas that face translators and interpreters in real life. Scholars and educators alike, however, have yet to engage fully with issues such as how students might be alerted to potential ethical dilemmas and encouraged to reflect on them as part of their training; how educators themselves might reflect on the ethics of teaching; and whether it is possible to elaborate an ethics that is specific to teaching translators and interpreters. With rare exceptions, mostly in the area of literary translation, translator and interpreter education has typically sidestepped these questions, and the issue of ethics in general. At most, students are made aware of existing professional codes of practice (often misleadingly referred to as codes of ethics). These tend to focus on the rights of the fee-paying client and stress the need for impartiality and fidelity, notwithstanding growing public concerns and debate over the rampant consumerism that has accompanied globalization in recent years. This special issue of the Interpreter and Translator Trainer provides a forum for reflection on questions of ethics in the context of translator and interpreter education. Covering a wide range of training contexts and types of translation and interpreting, contributors call for a radically altered view of the relationship between ethics and the translating and interpreting profession, a relationship in which ethical decisions can rarely, if ever, be made a priori but must be understood and taught as an integral and challenging element of one’s work.