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The author claims that most adults produce sentences in a foreign language, either in speaking it or translating into it, by tacit translation of corresponding words of their native language. Also, unless they are linguistically sophisticated, most people tend to translate native-language texts into another language as if each word in their language had one meaning or function. The author has found out, both by observation and research, that an average translator tends to render a word from her/his native language into a foreign one by translating its most frequent meaning, even though the particular word does not correspond to the most frequent translation equivalent in a particular context. For instance, there is no doubt that the most frequent French equivalent of the English preposition for is pour. Theefore, if asked to translate the phrase jump for joy into French, a linguistically naïve native speaker of English will most likely produce *sauter pour joie rather than the proper sauter de joie, because to her/him for simply “means” ‘pour’. By using pour, the most frequent French translation of for, in a context in which it cannot be used, the English-speaking translator has produced a wrong translation, which the author calls NAÏVE TRANSLATION EQUIVALENT.