> Also I'd expect if a person volunteers as translator they'd be pretty decent at speaking.

Translators (of texts) are not interpreters.

To learn nuances, spoken language is quite important.

I am not a translator and English is not my 1st language (technically) - I'd have no issues 'hopping' on a call.

I do. My written English is orders of magnitude better than my spoken English - simply because I practice it a lot more.

I have no problem "hopping on a call" if it's a casual conversation between friends, but when stakes actually matter it would be stupid to put myself in a worse position than strictly necessary. Native speakers have a habit of talking a lot, talking fast, and talking with a lot of subtleties, nuances, and hidden meanings. In written conversations I can read a sentence twice and think a second about the right phrasing to use in response, but in face-to-face conversations this is simply not possible.

It would be like a professional debater like college kids "debating" with late Charlie Kirk: no wonder they end up "getting owned" - they are punching way above their weight class!

> To learn nuances, spoken language is quite important.

In my experience, it's quite the opposite: written language carries a lot more nuances than the (often more shallow) spoken language.

The timezone is UTC+7. That's in Asia, two hours from Japan time. That's why the staff member making the reply brought it up:

> My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time.

thanks a ton! I did read it as GMT-7... I had to recheck it (just in case).

Mia maxima culpa!

The only context I can think of in which it wouldn't be true is if someone learned the language through full immersion with no text involved, it's a bizarre situation.

There's also no reason as to assume that a volunteer translator is good at speaking, especially in regards to English, which pronunciation is not explicitly stated in its writing (like, say, Spanish).

You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.

>You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.

That comma, gives you away. The commas (and punctuation in general) in English are rather special in a way they convey the spoken language rather than designated rules.

Edit: As for the full immersion when I was learning English (as kid, 5th grade or so), I recall visualizing the words (letters) in my head while speaking. Certain mistakes like than <> then, it's <> it, their<>there etc. are unlikely to happen while writing due to the way language was initially perceived (and b/c I leaned if-then much earlier). Still, esp. with English I'd not consider translating anything unless my spoken version of it was good enough.