(2016-02-17, 12:44 pm)muffinsenpai Wrote: I find this quite surprising. Not the fact that there are translators who cannot produce their non-native language, but that they are apparently the majority.
All of the translators I personally know, both native Japanese and native English speakers, can produce their second language very well. A few them have been called on to do translations into their second language for internal purposes only or possibly when it will be edited later by a native speaker. However for the most part when it is important the translations are done by native speaker and then edited by another native speaker.
Anecdotally a friend of mine had to let one of his employees go not because he was bad at Japanese, but because he wasn't a good enough English writing to produce something of the quality level they needed!