This paper stresses the importance of the acquisition and development of the cultural-competence necessary for the future translator. The author starts from the generally shared idea that the cultural aspect cannot be separated from the translator's task as it forms an integral part of the building of the pretranslation competence of the translator in the early stages of learning. The inexperienced translator will have to pay special attention to the direction s/he is working in and the cultures involved. The author thinks that the objectives of the teacher's work concerning the translator's cultural competence are to develop the awareness of the students about cultural differences, power relations between cultures and provide strategies to solve intercultural frictions. In order to reach these objectives, the author presents some practical work proposals based on translation commissions where directionality is a key issue