My day job is translating and in the course of the day I often run into a lot of different people that have various ideas about not only translation but also about foreign language and the ability to do both.
Oftentimes, people who know about (or pretend they know about) these two things (the ability to translate and the ability to speak a foreign language) usually fall into two camps: 1) Those who know that translation is a different skill than speaking a foreign language and the ability to do one does not preclude the ability to do the other and 2) those who think that they are the same thing and that if you can translate you can speak fluently and if you can speak fluently you can translate.
To be honest, this second group of people drive me crazy. Nobody thinks that just because they can speak English they can give a presentation, or that just because they can write they can be a journalist, novelist, or some other type of writer.
Why is it then that people who speak a foreign language automatically think they can translate to or from that language?
I believe it's a combination of ignorance on those not familiar with the translation field and good translators not speaking out and educating clients and others about translation. Until that happens, we're bound to be stereotyped as someone who can translate because he/she can speak a foreign language.
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