captain_spalding said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

OK, but I’m pretty sure that nobody native to N America in 1492 could speak French.

Or even Latin.

Polyglots are probably the best people to act as interpreters for people who do not share any language simply because they have a wide experience of the various ways languages differ structurally which does impart knowledge of what meaning is imparted when translation of simple concepts are attempted between two groups.

What Witty said.

And, as i said, you have no way of knowing who ‘the natives’ may have met previously.

So, you take someone who knows as many as possible of the languages that you know about, to maximise your chances of communication.

we prefer to use PowerPoint as our translator because it’s all about the slides