Speaking two languages no more makes a translator than having two hands makes a pianist. The translator writes, in their native or dominant language, a text that says what the original says — with its precision, its register, its implications — and that reads as if it had been written in that language. The interpreter, for their part, renders orally, in real time or nearly so, what a person is saying, in one direction or both. The first has a dictionary, references, time, the possibility of rereading; the second has only their preparation, their memory and their composure. Some professionals do both; many do only one, and say so.
Translation: a text, a target language, a purpose
A translation order begins with three questions. Which text: a contract, a technical manual, a website, an annual report, a diploma, a press article? Each genre has its codes and its vocabulary, and a legal translator is not necessarily a medical translator. Into which language, and for which reader: the English of a contract for a Nigerian partner, of a website for tourists, of an article for a scientific journal is not the same English. For what purpose: a document intended for a foreign administration may require a sworn translation; an internal working text will be content with a faithful translation without formality.
The professional translator translates into their dominant language. They ask the client about ambiguous terms, acronyms, proper names, the intended tone. They deliver a proofread text, in the requested format, with a glossary of terminology choices where relevant. They charge per word, per page or as a flat fee, with a lead time that depends on volume and technicality — a translator who promises twenty pages of contract for the next morning will deliver an unrevised text.
Interpreting: consecutive, simultaneous, liaison
Interpreting comes in modes that do not have the same requirements. In consecutive mode, the speaker talks for a few minutes, the interpreter takes notes, then renders; it is the mode of speeches, formal negotiations, site visits. In simultaneous mode, the interpreter translates while the speaker is talking, in a booth with headphones and a microphone, or by whispering for one or two people; it is the mode of conferences, and it requires two interpreters who take turns every twenty to thirty minutes, because concentration does not hold beyond that. In liaison mode, the interpreter accompanies a conversation between two or a few people — a business meeting, a medical visit, an administrative appointment — and translates in both directions.
The client must provide beforehand everything that helps the interpreter prepare: agenda, presentations, participants’ names, the company’s glossary, documents that will be quoted. An interpreter who discovers in session that this is a negotiation on mining concessions, with its own vocabulary, will do their best; an interpreter who received the documents the day before will do well.
What the interpreter is not
The interpreter is neither the adviser, nor the lawyer, nor the ally of one of the parties. They translate what is said, including what is clumsy, aggressive or false; they do not correct, do not summarise on their own initiative, do not give their opinion. If one party asks them “don’t translate that”, they let the other party know that a remark was not addressed to them, rather than becoming an accomplice to a secret. That neutrality is the condition of trust on both sides of the table.
Nor are they a secretary, a guide or a driver — even if, on an assignment of several days, they often render services beyond their role. Those services are negotiated separately.
Sworn translation, legalisation, apostille
A translation intended for an administration or a court — birth certificate, diploma, judgment, company articles, criminal record — must often be done by a sworn or accredited translator, registered with a court or a ministry, who certifies that their translation conforms to the original by their stamp and signature. The arrangements vary from one country to another, and a translator sworn in one country is not automatically sworn in another.
A sworn translation is not always enough: the original document or the translation may need to be legalised — authenticated by a chain of authorities — or bear an apostille, when both countries are parties to the 1961 Hague Convention that provides for it. The competent translator can explain these steps to the client, indicate the order in which to complete them, and distinguish what falls to them (the certified translation) from what falls to the administrations (legalisation). Whether a document is accepted by a foreign administration does not depend on them: only that administration decides.
Copyright and confidentiality
A translation is a derivative work, protected by copyright in the same way as the original, as WIPO’s principles recall; UNESCO’s Nairobi Recommendation on the legal protection of translators insists on the recognition of their name, on written contracts and on fair remuneration. In practice, the contract between the client and the translator should specify who holds the rights to the translation and which uses are permitted — publication, distribution, modification. For an internal commercial document, the assignment of rights goes without saying and is formalised in one line; for a book or a public website, it deserves a discussion.
Confidentiality runs the other way: the translator and the interpreter see contracts, accounts, medical files, strategies. They undertake, in writing, to disclose nothing, and they protect the files they receive — a document sent through a consumer messaging service or translated by an online tool that retains texts is no longer confidential. The personal data contained in a translated document falls under the protection laws that the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection has inspired: the translator processes it for the sole purpose of translation, then deletes it.
Tools and machine translation
Professional translators use assistive tools — translation memories, glossaries, checkers — that guarantee terminological consistency from one document to the next. Machine translation has improved and serves, for simple texts with nothing at stake, to understand what something is about. For a contract, a safety notice, a website that commits a brand, it produces plausible and sometimes false texts, without the reader being able to see it. The honest translator tells their client when machine translation is enough, and when it is dangerous — and charges the revision of a machine translation as a job in its own right, because that is what it is.
In the African context
Within one country, and often within one meeting, inherited official languages — French, English, Portuguese, Arabic — coexist with national languages spoken by the majority: that is the basic fact of the trade on the continent. The liaison interpreter working between a team of foreign engineers and the inhabitants of a village, or between a doctor and a patient, does not only translate words: they carry a public consultation, a medical consent, a land agreement. The quality of their work has direct consequences for people, and that market — community, court and medical interpreting — is as important as the conference market, although less visible and less well paid.
Regional and continental integration, for its part, which multiplies the need for institutional translation: regional organisations, the African Union, community courts, donor-funded projects that require reports in two or three languages, companies expanding from one language area to another — from Senegal to Ghana, from Cameroon to Nigeria, from Mozambique to South Africa. The Continental Free Trade Area will add contracts, standards and disputes to translate. Translators and interpreters trained in these fields, with precise legal and economic vocabulary in two official languages, are sought after and rare.
As for training: a few schools and university departments on the continent train high-level translators and conference interpreters, and the rest of the profession has learnt on the job, through practice and reading. National professional associations, where they exist, are beginning to define standards and rates; the market remains largely informal, with untrained “translators” undercutting prices and clients who discover, in court or in front of a foreign partner, what the cheap translation was worth.
Sworn translation, next, depends on very uneven national arrangements: lists of experts attached to courts, ministerial accreditations, or the absence of any framework. A translator who knows precisely their country’s procedure — and that of their clients’ usual destination countries, for studies abroad, marriages, inheritances — provides a service few people can.
Digital technology, moreover, has opened a global market to the continent’s translators: platforms, foreign agencies, remote clients. It also exposes them to global competition and to the temptation of machine translation resold without revision. The professional who stands out does so through a specialisation — legal, medical, technical, mining, financial — and through a language pair in which they are truly excellent, including when one of the languages is an African language.
Setting up: one language pair, one field
The freelance translator needs a computer, translation tools, specialised dictionaries and a status that allows invoicing; the interpreter additionally needs physical preparation for long days and, for simultaneous work, access to booth equipment, generally hired by the organiser. The first clients often come from a sector one already knows — law, medicine, engineering — and that is the sector to display.
The professional’s website should state their languages with the working direction (into which they translate), their fields of specialisation, the interpreting modes they practise, their sworn status where applicable and their confidentiality procedure. It gains from explaining the difference between translation and interpreting, and between plain and sworn translation: a client who has understood orders better, and does not expect the impossible.
The question that prevents misunderstandings
“This document — who is going to read it, and to do what?” A translator who asks that question before quoting a price sells the right service: the working translation, the publishable translation, the sworn translation, the revision of an existing text, or the interpreter for the meeting where the document will be discussed. One who answers with a price per word without asking sells words — and the client will only know afterwards whether they were the right ones.