'translate' vs 'interpret'

To 'translate' is to render an interpretation in writing. When it's oral, it should always be 'interpret.' Lately a lot of people have started using the two words interchangeably but that is incorrect.

I agree. It is often used as though they had the same meaning.

Is it? I was unaware of that. I use them interchangeably.

And "interpret" can have another meaning as well, to explain a text in the same language, or even to draw some meaning from signs.

I've been a contract interpreter for the U.S. State Dept. (Foreign Ministry to you ) for nearly 20 years. The distinction between interpreter and translator is quite definite. One has to take a separate and quite different test to be qualified as an interpreter from that of a translator. As a general rule, interpreters don't like to be referred to as 'translators'. But it seems hard to convince some radio and TV reporters and news-writers of the distinction.

I agree completely with MA (the old geezer) . . . i can read French with almost the same facility as i read English. I can translate French (including reading a text in French, speaking the translation aloud in English) with almost the same facility.

I could never hope to be an interpreter, which is an entirely different skill.

They're quite different streams academically.

Okay, understood, thanks.

It also occurred to me, that a translation should be very faithful to the original, while an interpretation can be more of an explanation.

A translator has the luxury of time on his side. He/she can sit at a WP with a stack of dictionaries and grammars at the elbow and polish sentences so that the translation is precise and even elegant. As long as a deadline is met, that's fun work. The interpreter has no such luxury. He/she has to know the exact right word, the appropriate colloquial phrase, the hard-to-translate local expression right there, on the spot, while the other person is still speaking in a different language. That is why, in most government-sponsored assignments, interpreters are assigned in pairs. One person can't do it for much longer than, say, 20 minutes. You don't run out of verbal steam but your mind starts to get fried. So you turn it right over to your partner for her/his 20 minutes of brief fame while your cranium cools.

I've tried interpreting, it's the thing where you're speaking words while looking at other words (or in your case, speaking them while listening) that really fries my brain. It's a tough job, much respect to those who can manage it.