As for pronunciation, I’ve read an article that says children have difficult pronouncing or hearing the sounds in foreign languages from as early as age 5, because by then a child has learned to focus on only the sounds relevant to his or her native language. When I was teaching English to Japanese first-graders, I noticed that those students had trouble pronouncing or differentiating between the English “r” and “l” sounds.

I think that pronunciation is a skill to be mastered. Like you, I started studying Japanese a little later in life (around age 20). I met many people who lived in Japan for years and could not pronounce Japanese well (or could barely even form a sentence), and I think what it boils down to is how willing one is to become better at a language. I was pretty good at mimicking the Japanese language when I began learning it, but there were many problem areas (the short vowel sound, the “r” sound, etc.), and I had to tackle each problem area one by one and get through it. I would sit and repeat words over and over again until I got the ok from a Japanese friend. I still try to improve on my pronunciation and feel it’s far from perfect, but it took a lot of work to get to where I am now.

The unwritten translation “rule” is to translate only into one’s native language. If that’s true, then only a passive understanding of the B language is really necessary to translate. In the in-house translation/interpreting world, however, this is not the case. About 50% of what I translate is into Japanese, and I have to interpret primarily into Japanese for meetings. My Japanese isn’t perfect, but as long as I make an effort to communicate the information to the best of my ability, it’s good enough. I’m thankful for the opportunity, because it’s quite interesting, and I’m learning a lot.

I know a German who learned English as an older teen and has no discernable accent, but as you say: “they will tend to make very occasional slips.” And, sure enough, one year at Thanksgiving he couldn’t remember the word for turkey “baster” and it flummoxed him. It wouldn’t have bothered a native speaker so much. I started learning my B language(s) at the age of 19 and would be thrilled if not remembering the word for “baster” were my Achilles’ heel. But no such luck. I’m just proud that they can’t guess I’m American.

One of the best things about being a translator (in addition to being my own boss, working from home, getting to do different kinds of texts all the time, and seeing people’s naughty corporate secrets) is that people actually PAY me to improve my language skills. Every time I parse a sentence or look up a word I think, “ah, they are paying me to do this!” For a language-learning geek, that is a true blessing! Thanks for the great post!

I didn’t mention target language because this article is specifically about the B language . But I don’t think that there’s an age cutoff for translating into a second language; it’s just that very few people learn a foreign language as adults and go on to write it like natives — they tend to hit a point of diminishing returns, and fossilize.

I should point out, though, that the J->E situation is rather unique in that the vast majority of J->E translation is done by native speakers of Japanese. Nearly all of the English they write is distinctly non-native (to the point where rewriting English translations done by Japanese is a major industry here), but they’re getting paid… Some of them eventually learn to produce acceptable English translations, even though nearly all of them started learning English after the so-called critical period.