text: Even though the ribosomes are usually considered accurate and processive machines, the translation process is subject to errors that can lead either to the synthesis of erroneous proteins or to the premature abandonment of translation, either because a tRNA couples to a wrong codon or because a tRNA is coupled to the wrong amino acid.   The rate of error in synthesizing proteins has been estimated to be between 1 in 10 and 1 in 10 misincorporated amino acids, depending on the experimental conditions. The rate of premature translation abandonment, instead, has been estimated to be of the order of magnitude of 10 events per translated codon.