This article deals with natural translators and interpreters and the research that has been conducted on this matter. A natural translator/interpreter is an untrained and very often unremunerated bilingual individual who acts as a linguistic and cultural (inter)mediator in a variety of formal and informal contexts and situations. In Europe the study of natural translation is still a marginal and quite neglected area of research, especially within and, with very few exceptions (Antonini 2010; Meyer 2010), almost exclusively UK-based (Hall 2004).