The importance of being right in translation

From my own personal experience, I can say that translating/interpreting from one language to another is very difficult, since a word may have different meanings when translated into another language and vice versa. And that is why it is very important that the translator/interpreter knows the two languages well, and the context that he is translating. When acting as a middleman between two parties who don't understand each other's language, the translator is of utmost importance, because the mutual understanding that comes out of any discussion hinges on the accuracy of his translation.

Recently, I had a personal experience with how a wrong impression can be left by inaccurate translation. In a question and answer session, because the translator translated the question wrongly, the answer given did not end up answering the original question. The impression left was that the answerer was avoiding the question. Instead of improving mutual understanding (which was the aim of the session), it ended up creating misunderstanding, all because the translator did not translate the question accurately.