What makes a good translator? What makes a bad translator? Fluency in the source and target languages is without a doubt essential… but is it enough? We look at the latest science behind bilingualism and compare it with our experience as professional translators and interpreters. The bilingual mind functions a bit differently than the monolingual brain. According to Ellen Bialystok a leading researcher in this field from York University: “The bilingual mind is in constant con

The dream or pitch of science-fiction writers, military generals, and salesmen over the last century has been to push a button and have an instant translation. We now have accessible, instant and seemingly reliable machine translation from heavy-hitters such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM – yet translation remains over a $43 billion industry employing well over 380,000 professionals worldwide. What’s the hold up? For one thing, machine translation is not yet as reliable as one