4 translation skills all translators need, but most bilinguals lack!

When you look at these 4 essential translation skills, you’ll understand why most bilinguals don’t make great translators. To start with, you may be surprised to know that many people who speak another language, and perhaps most, fall well short of the required language skills needed for professional translation. Then there are the required personality traits – if you’re a speed over substance person, forget it! And how many of us are actually damn fine writers? Yes, that’s another of the key skills everyone needs to be a decent translator. After all translators need to produce well-worded texts people will enjoy reading - across all sorts of styles. Like marketing spiel, legalise, technical materials, even colloquial language at times. How many of us have the skills to do that! On top of this, translating any chunk of text involves pretty complex mental processing. Which means if you don’t follow a thorough translation process, your translations are unlikely to consistently be up to scr