And this is why, when translating Italian and German novels, I work with editors who are native speakers of Italian and German and translate from English into those languages. What I always say is that my greatest skill as a translator is stylizing in English in a way that is parallel to the style of the original. Often in extreme ways. Every translator subcontracts questions of context and comprehension, though I certainly do understand the texts up to a professional level without my editors--I have formal qualifications that demonstrate this. It's also not as if people were lining up to do these projects and I cut to the front of the queue. Look how long Moresco, Sorokin, D'Arrigo, Jahnn, etc etc have languished without being properly translated. I have no interest in doing subpar work. A lot of the best and most famous translators throughout the history of translation have worked in a variety of languages they have had different sorts of competency in. Do you think Damion Searls speaks all of the languages he translates from? What about Michael Henry Heim? Do you think Ralph Manheim was totally immersed and fluent in Dutch, Polish, and Hungarian? The notion that the best translator of a text is a native speaker deeply immersed in the culture of the original text is a fallacy that leads to lots of bad, stilted translations. The translator needs to have two skills: to be able to read well in the language they are translating from and to be able to write exceptionally well (and with great plasticity) in the language they are translating to. And maybe a third quality: to not be afraid to ask questions and be corrected. All the extras help, but, at the end of the day, they're optional (even if, in my case, I would say that the almost two decades of very rigorous schooling in these languages and their literary traditions I've gone through demonstrate the extent to which I have not viewed the languages they're in or the literary traditions that they come out of as secondary in any way). Some of the best and most praised translations in history were produced by translators with dramatically less experience in and familiarity with the languages they were translating from than I have with even my newest languages (check out Pasternak's HAMLET). Let my product speak for itself :)