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Being bilingual does not equal being a translator

by Tony Chusho
(Lima, Peru, SA)

I remember that I had just returned home from graduating at a USA university and one day, my father asked me how to say the following in English:


"Y, ¿cómo te ha ido hoy día?"


Well, I just couldn't make it out. The immediate conclusion he jumped at was, in his spontaneous Spanish, "Boy, you really wasted your time in that country".


It took me some years to be able to go back to him and show him I did not waste my time in that country up to the north of mine and that just because I was bilingual didn't mean I knew how to translate everything.

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Being bilingual does not equal being a translator

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Nov 02, 2009
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starstarstarstarstar 		bilingualism is not translation
by: Clint

Good comment, Tony. That is one of the biggest myths for people that aren't translators, that being bilingual is the same thing as being a translator. I don't know if that myth will ever go away, because it seems to be so ingrained in so many people. You can only hope to educate people one at a time so that they don't automatically assume the same thing.

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