Since their arrival to the coasts of the sea of China and their installation in these regions, during the XVIth century, one of the first obstacles that the Portuguese had to face and to overcome was the linguistic barrier. The intermediation, for a long time, of the Jesuits, and later on of interpreters and translators in a growing bilingual community was indispensable for the survival and continuity of the Portuguese administration up to the 19th of December of 1999. From a sociolinguistic point of view, in several different communities (the Portuguese, the Chinese, the English and others) which are all part of the same cultural community (Macau), translators and interpreters, through their professional activity, allow, as intermediaries of monolingual communities, each community to be a part of a plurilingual culture.