There’s nothing more likely to get my professional hackles raised than hearing some clueless news reporter saying something like “Speaking through a translator, Mr. Smith gave a press conference…”. Apart from the obvious practical considerations of how you hold a translator up to your mouth and where do you speak through, it galls me to hear people over and over again refer to translators as interpreters, and vice versa.

And it’s nearly always television and radio reporters who are the culprits. Our fellow wordsmiths in the newspapers generally get it right, thankfully. But it is surprising that people have such difficulty in grasping the difference between a translator – someone who takes stuff from one language and writes it down – and an interpreter – someone who takes stuff from another language and speaks it. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with interpreters at all and am in awe of conference interpreters (except for one nameless interpreter in Dublin who spoke about “research machines” when the French speaker was talking about “search engines”). It’s just that translating and interpreting are two very separate jobs which require different skills and qualities. It’s like the difference between pirates and ninjas, apples and pears, cornflakes and rice crispies… they’re similar but very different.

Perhaps it’s merely a symptom of a wider ignorance among the general public of what it is language professionals in all of their flavours actually do. Maybe it’s a wake-up call for the translating and interpreting communities to raise awareness… then again, maybe it’s only me that’s bothered by this in which case, never mind!