We study approximation algorithms for two closely related problems: the problems of finding a short synchronizing and a short mortal word for a given prefix code. Roughly speaking, a synchronizing word is a word guaranteeing a unique interpretation, and a mortal word is a word guaranteeing no interpretation for any sequence of codewords. We concentrate on the case of finite prefix codes and consider both the cases where the code is defined by listing all its codewords and where the code is defined by an automaton recognizing the star of the code. This is a joint work with Marek Szykuła (University of Wroclaw).