Translation skills require an excellent command of the native language and an excellent working knowledge of the source language from which the translator will translate. It is always appropriate to translate into the mother tongue. And why is this? Well, think about how this: how often have you come across written communications that don’t quite make sense – this is most common with instruction manuals – or received an email written in English but with multiple spelling and stylistic mistakes? It’s probably happened quite often.

What if the email is written by a translator seeking employment from a translation company and the translator offers to translate from English into another language? Well, let’s turn the scenario around to start with. If a person translates into English, it is only reasonable to expect native proficiency in English just as if he or she were to offer translation from English to Arabic, for instance, you would expect native Arabic proficiency.

When the proposal is to translate from English, a high level of fluency is expected, near native ideally, but the odd awkward sounding expression is forgivable since 100% native proficiency in 100% of all speakers of a foreign language, whether they use the language or languages professionally or casually, is unrealistic and quite frankly, unattainable for the most part.

A translation company priding itself in providing quality services and consistently high standards will be aware of this and not discriminate unnecessarily. The applicant’s experience, qualification and references will facilitate the company’s decision as to whether or not to give that individual a chance. 

Nonetheless, this will be unlikely to happen where the application contains obvious errors on every, or almost every, line. This may be due to simple typing errors rather than lack of competence or knowledge of the source (English) language. However, where this is the case, it is worse for the professional, competent linguist potentially responsible for the applicant’s recruitment to see this as it manifestly demonstrates a lack of care and pride in one’s service.  

If you double check what you write in your native language, you should as a minimum triple check what you write in your other language or languages. This should happen even if you have years of experience working in or speaking the language that is not your mother tongue. Serious translation companies want to see attention to detail, care and pride in written communications from potential collaborators as much as translation company clients want to see this in the service they receive.