I don’t know if it happens in every country, but I feel like in most places people’s speaking and writing is getting worse and worse. And we, the translators, are people too; meaning that, living in this century, in this society, we are no different. We are well aware of the rules, but we don’t use them in our daily lives: because it would sound awkward, because one wants to “fit in,” because we don’t have time for everything.

We use “bad words” and borrowed words, and we don’t even pay attention to the correct forms or structures of how things should be said or written, even though we are well aware of what is correct. It is estimated that kids today have a vocabulary of roughly 200 words, while a middle aged adult (40 years old) normally uses about two thousand. Television, radio and newspapers are certainly not helping, because they’ve fallen into using the same deprived language. New forms of communication- chatting, e-mail, text messages- ironically make communicating easier, but also force us to use fewer words, abbreviations, and the shortest of phrases.
I believe that translators, both young and old, belong to a special group of people that loves language, takes care of it, studies it and has obtained a richer vocabulary. In our job, we watch the rules and force ourselves to edit properly. And we have an important task: to continue preserving our language, to continue forcing ourselves to use it as it should be used and not allowing it to become impoverished.  The advantage is that for us, this is not a job that we do reluctantly, but rather a duty that we fulfill with a satisfying dignity.