Translation and interpreting are skills; that means they take training. It takes more than one being a bilingual or multilingual to perform effective translation or interpreting.

Although someone who is fluent in more than one language does have potential and assets to make a good translator or interpreter, fluency alone does not guarantee that the person will be well capable of "crossing the border" between the different languages with an entire message kept complete.

This may be especially true in translation or interpreting of languages deriving from absolutely different roots, for example, Latin and Khmer.

Aside from cultural contexts, it is the difference in lexicality that chiefly presents common challenges in translation or interpreting of languages deriving from different roots.

So what does it take for one to make a good translator or interpreter? We will discuss that in a future blog.