I started translating due to financial
problems. My ever- deepening overdraft made me look for other sources of
income, and so it happened: I turned a hobby into a profession. Since I
spent many years reading and studying Humanities texts (I got an MA in
Art History), I started translating academic texts for graduate students. I
liked it, and the students were very happy, but I soon outgrow the fees
I could charge. In 2000 I started working for the magazines of the "People
and Computers" group, including: "Business 2.0", "Gadgets", "Click"
(about computer games), "Internet World" and "PC Media". I even wrote a
column for the first one, the Israeli version of the prestigious
international magazine for New Economy, "Business 2.0" .
The very same year my own short
stories book, ("Te'enim, Ahuvati") came out. I offered my publisher, Ilan
Shenfeld, to translate, as a package deal, the book "The Dyke and the Dybbuk",
by Ellen Galford. That was the very first book I translated (from English to
Hebrew, of course). It tells the story of Rainbow, a Londoner dyke. She
works as a taxi driver, and is haunted by a bunch of her aunts and a Dybbuk that
insists on keeping her side of an agreement signed 300 years before. The
agreement is to
haunt Rainbow's grand-grand-grand-grand (etc.)-grandmother. It is a very
funny,
very Jewish and very Dykish book that my friend Idit got me for my birthday,
in the first year I came out. I laughed
all the way... The translated book was published in early 2001.
The year 2001 saw the burst of the
High Tech bubble, and many of the aforementioned magazines closed . That
change, as bad as it was for the company and its other employees, was good for me: I had much more time to realize my dream and
translate books such as: "Vital Signs 2002
" by the Worldwatch
Institute, "New Age Living" by Paul Roland, "Meditation
" by Bill Anderton,
and some more that have not come out yet (in Hebrew) such as "101 Secrets A Good Dad Knows" for Babel Publishing House. In the Books section of
this site, I mention some of the books I would LOVE to
translate: "The Fifth Sacred Thing"
and "Walking to Mercury"
by Starhawk,
"Flashbacks"
by Timothy Leary,
"Even Cowgirls Get the
Blues" by
Tom Robbins,
"Zami" by Audre Lord,
"Stone Butch Blues" by Leslie
Feinberg, "Mavericks of the Mind" and
"Voices from the Edge" by David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen Novick,
"One Foot in the Future"
by Nina Graboi and "Everything is Under
Control" by Robert Anton Wilson and Miriam Joan Hill
.
I usually don't translate from
Hebrew to English, but if you would like to get an
impression of my translations, you can take a look at the
Writing section of this site,
where I linked some of the articles I have translated into English.
Being a translator is a
great privilege for me. First, because it allows me to bring new
exciting books to an Israeli, Hebrew readering audience. I like to think I
make a difference, in my own way. But beyond that, it gives me an
access to the private, secret world of the author. This way, I become a
witness to their ideas, dilemmas, and inner monologues. It's such a
wonderful gift, isn't it?