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Sounds like there may even be some hope for those of us who come to it late!

I seem to remember seeing some research some time ago on this subject where they found that bilingual children developed two different areas in the brain to deal with each language. Interpreters who work for the UN and the European Commission and elsewhere must be absolutely bilingual and be able to switch from one language to another without any hesitation or getting mixed up and of course to provide an accurate translation. When the subject matter is technical or scientific and you are not familiar with it, that quickly becomes quite a challenge. I remember one English-speaking interpreter in Brussels finding himself having to translate a heated argument about fishing quotas and to his horror he found that the same species of fish had one name in the North of France on the Channel coast and a different name in the South on the Mediterranean coast. It changed according to where the speaker came from. I've also heard that direct interpreting from Japanese can be a nightmare as they speak in long sentences, adding on extra phrases, where you have to wait for the verb at the end to be able to make sense of it, meanwhile the speaker is carrying on into the next sentence. I've had to interpret for a French politician - that's when you realise that what they're saying is more often than not meaningless waffle - and I had to interrupt him to translate, otherwise he just kept on talking. He wasn't best pleased but you have to, otherwise you lose the thread of he's been saying.

Si c'est un discours politique t'as pas besoin de traduire, quelle que soit la langue, c'est du vent

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Tá an ceart agat a chara, go huile is go hiomlán - mais je n'avais pas de choix, c'était le big boss de la MJC où je travaillais à l'époque - encore un qui était trés haut placé mais tout à coup il s'est rendu compte qu'il était incapable d'allonger une seule phrase correcte an anglais. Il y en a un paquet comme ça.

ouais je suis au courant

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne