This dissertation presents a curriculum-based analysis of Translation and Interpreting (TI) approaches, focusing on the Spanish context. It includes the identity and experience of TI students as curriculum agents by means of an exploratory study in which over 500 students from six different TI schools participated. TI curriculum approaches deal more with the so-called explicit curriculum (e.g. programmes of studies) while implicit and practical factors are sometimes neglected. New ways of approaching curriculum design and development within our field are presented. The thesis concludes that a new transferable approach to translation skills would be interesting for future curricula development. This perspective helps solve some of the curriculum incongruities detected, specifically the fact that TI studies do not successfully respond to either social demands or student expectations in some contexts. Bearing in mind the growing technical and specific expertise that the translation and interpreting market requires and the number of people who live or work having to deal with international or intercultural contexts, translation and interpreting skills can indeed be considered something different to translator and interpreter skills. A diversified TI curricula panorama would help better respond to both highly expert and transferable social demands.