Native or non-native?

[alexpgp]

My response to a question posed in ru_translate, on whether it is better for the translator to have a native understanding of the source text, or to be a native speaker of the target language:

Your "при прочих равных" [the asker had stipulated "all other things being equal" in his question] is troublesome, but to answer what I think your question is: it is generally better to use a translator who is working into his or her own language.

As any language student can tell you, languages utterances are comprehended more easily than constructed, though here we must tack on the condition "all other things being equal." (An indirect "proof" of this assertion is that language utterances constructed by non-native speakers are generally comprehensible by native speakers despite the presence of linguistic inaccuracy in the utterance.)

Человек, на пример, может плохо писать русский язык. Но не смотря на то, что есть ошибки в тексте, вы всетаки будете его понимать, не так ли?

However, the point of translation is not simply to render a source text in written form. In my opinion, it is to render a source text in a written form suitable, if you will, for publication (which is why being bilingual is not enough to make one a translator, and why native speakers have an advantage in translation).

For non-Russian speakers, the part I added in Russian states, roughly: The person, for an example, can badly write English language. Despite the being of errors in the text, you never the less will understand it, not so?

Cheers...