Esther Perkal - a chat about language, accuracy, and the exclusivity of inner society
Hey! Welcome to another issue of Frum Books, home of everything related to frum publishing. Talking about translating feels like peering into a closet supposed to be closed. A good translation is invisible, and, as I learned, a narrow walk of bridging the divide between cultures. Esther Perkal is the owner of TarguMaster, a translating company based in Israel. She’s translated Israeli favorites such as Friendly Fire, Double Agent, 23 Under 1 Roof, and The Search. Plus, check out a quick roundup of Shavuos releases.
I was born in Israel, and grew up in Baltimore. Today, I live with my family in Beitar Illit, Israel where I own and manage a translation company called Targum Master. I personally translate from Hebrew into English, and translators working for me who translate into Hebrew, French, Spanish, German, Yiddish, and Russian. I don't translate, I rewrite. I take your text, and I turn it into a different language.
To translate books, you don’t necessarily have to be completely fluent in the language you're translating from. What you need most is literary talent and flawless command of the language you're translating into. Yet beyond vocabulary, high-quality translation also requires understanding of the nuances of language, the culture of a language, and the people behind the language. You can memorize a dozen dictionaries and thesauruses, but they won’t teach you expressions of language. There are things you say in Hebrew that you'll never say in English, and vice versa; and there are phrases or expressions that, when translated, are not wrong per se, but are simply unnatural. And then, of course, there are translations that are simply wrong. The example I always laugh about is the time I read in a book "atah egoz" and then realized that the guy was saying, “You're a nut!”
What is the process of bringing an Israeli book to the English market from start to finish?
The general process is no different than publishing any book, except that it starts one stage earlier—with translation. This begins with either the author approaching a translator or publisher, or a publisher approaching an author and offering to translate their book in exchange of royalties.
Translating a book is a long and expensive process that can take anywhere between a month and a year. Sometimes, when it’s the author initiating, he has no idea what he’s getting into. I’ve had many people approach me to translate a family memoir or book who were shocked to discover all it entails.
I don't read the book before I start, which I think helps me write better. When I don’t know what’s happening, it builds it up as I go along. Then when I go back to edit and proofread, I know what's going on and I'll catch things, I’ll realize that when I chose this word I didn't know what the author meant.
It's a third of the time translating and two-thirds editing and proofreading. If it's a book, I'll only edit and proofread once, then it goes to editors, proofreaders, and typesetters and I don't see it again. If it's something like an article or proposal, which goes to print without another pair of eyes, I'll check it twice because I want to make sure it's really perfect.
I always give my clients a disclaimer that I'm not perfect and everything needs another pair of eyes. Sometimes someone will do it cheaply and say I hired you, that's enough. There was one that I remember that I told a client a hundred times that he needed it to be checked. He sent it to me after typesetting and I corrected anything that had to be corrected. And afterward it was printed with the track changes. I felt so bad for the author, that was a very unprofessional job. It's really not in my hands.
I'm assuming a lot of these authors don’t speak English, so essentially speaking, they can't ever check your work or approve it. Is that right?
Some authors don't speak a word of English and, in our very first conversation, tell me that they’re trusting me blindly. Others have basic proficiency, and some are completely fluent, but still aren’t capable of writing in English. In general, it’s very, very rare for anyone to write professionally and skillfully in two languages.
What else is “converted” during the translation process aside from the actual language?
I tell my clients, Give me free rein and trust me. Let me try to take your book and turn it into an American book. Naturally, the plot and characters remain the same, and I do my best to remain authentic to the author’s distinct style and tone. Inevitably, there are scenes that get altered in the process, most notably dialogue and names. People don’t realize how much conversation is distinct to the language they’re speaking, how many expressions and how much slang they use in a single dialogue.
I was translating something today and it was somebody in Lodz, and the character's name is Tzvika. Now Tzvika is a totally Israeli name, a sabra name. That was like an automatic switch, I don't even ask. In Hebrew, one of the nicknames is vav shin, "ush", like Rinush and Dinush, and Chanush. First of all, it looks ridiculous, an American wouldn't even realize what they were reading. And, when a character has such a foreign name, they’re not relatable anymore.
Sometimes the storyline is so Israeli that Americans will miss the whole nuance of it. There's a series that’s being serialized now in one of the major newspapers that’s such an Israeli story that I'm convinced that the Americans really don't understand the storyline. The Israeli writer did a phenomenal job with it, but if you ask me, it was a chaval it was translated. It's about very inner Israeli societal problems. It gives an American a window into the world, but I really think they're missing the nuances of it. My favorite, favorite book is Etka Gitel Schwartz's Full Harvest. My teenagers read it and they loved it, but they said, if you would translate it to Hebrew no one would get it! Certain things are meant for their own places.
On the other hand, there’s the opposite perspective that translating a book, as foreign as it might be to the audience, offers readers a window into another world. Not every book or plot has to be entirely relatable, just like if you were reading a book about Japanese people living in Japan, you wouldn’t expect to relate to them either.
The Israeli Chareidi market is probably much more narrow in terms of demographic than the English-speaking market, which might be why the conflicts are so specific and relatable to fewer people.
Yeah, it's a very specific market. If you don't call yourself Chareidi, you're probably not reading Chareidi fiction. It’s growing, though, I know there is a group of National Religious and Modern Orthodox in Israel who specifically subscribe to charedi publications because they share our values and want clean literature.
There are, actually, some authors here that cross the lines into a secular audience. When Maya Kanan wrote The Betrayal and The Outcast, they went like Harry Potter went in America, people were waiting down the block to get them. Those books are really amazing.
Israeli writers often use references from Tanach as expressions or descriptions. How do you translate these while keeping consistent to the message?
It's a rare occasion that it really works to translate. A lot of times I'll just omit them, because it doesn't work. It's not just expressions of the Torah, sometimes it's Israeli expressions. Israelis say Ribono Shel Olam all the time, in America people say Hashem. There's something called localizing the book, which means making it suited for the public in a certain location.
In Hebrew, you can have one word that sums up a concept, which won't necessarily exist in English.
I come across this most often when translating divrei Torah and halachah. There are many terms and concepts in Hebrew or Aramaic that can be expressed in a single word or short phrase but require a full sentence and/or footnotes to explain in English!
Hebrew divrei Torah encompass a great deal of lashon hakodesh which the author assumes the reader is familiar with. I just translated Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel's Divrei Torah, it was just printed for the Mir dinner in New Jersey. That was an amazing experience. It was his shmuessen that he gave in the Mir. The target audience is still a yeshivish crowd, but it was printed by Artscroll, so you might also be dealing with a little bit less yeshivish crowd. So we added notes and explanatory points.
From your bilingual perspective, what are the main differences between Israeli and American fiction? What does that say about the two cultures?
One of the major differences is that Americans are much more makpid on authenticity - you can't leave hanging threads. Israelis are just much less discerning, they don't care if it's true or not. You're going to laugh, but I remember translating something and it struck me as wrong. The guy was in Madrid, and he was sitting on the beach and smelled the ocean. I googled it, Madrid is 200 miles from any water. There was a book I was translating where in chapter 55 the character was in the hospital and - uh oh - she discovered that she needs a kidney transplant. In the next chapter, she walks right out of the hospital. Nobody remembered it two weeks later in the serial, but when it came to translating the book, what do I do now?
The Agent for Hire books are currently the hottest series in the English-speaking market - did the series’s success come as a surprise?
Not really, because they’re just as popular in Hebrew! I translated the first book in the series, Friendly Fire, and the last one, Double Agent, which just came out recently. I’m on the brink of starting the sixth book in the series which is called Tvach Efes. The title translates literally as Point Blank, but since I haven’t even started, I have no idea what we’re going to ultimately call it. Book titles are usually reserved for the last stage. The book is scheduled to come out next Pesach.
Why do you think the Agent for Hire series, with its uniquely Israeli plots (Mossad, etc.), is so well received amongst American kids?
Thrillers and adventures are always fun; it keeps you turning pages, and the Mossad specifically fascinates and captures people’s imagination. I think that there’s a certain pride in knowing that the greatest espionage and counterintelligence agency in the world is Jewish. The fact that Yonah Sapir took a frum character and placed him in that setting enchants readers. She also did a tremendous amount of research before creating her plots and characters, and much of what she writes is authentic. I translated the first one, Friendly Fire, and the last one that came out, Double Agent.
How does translating for fiction differ from other genres, like copywriting or official documents?
I do everything from legal things, financial reports, medical, tons of memoirs, Parsha sheets, real Gemara, financial proposals, political campaigns, you name it. Legal is literal as can be. Like sometimes you read a legal contract and think, it doesn't even make sense in English. But that's okay, legalese is literal as can be.
Over the years I've learned a tremendous amount from my research. I feel like in the line of work I do, I have to be knowledgeable about everything. I once did something for a foreign ministry. It was for an Israeli company going to a foreign defense ministry in one of the Asian countries that was trying to figure out how to build up their cybersecurity. I didn't know the first thing about cybersecurity, so I did a crash course to understand what was going on.
And there are things that repeat, I've done 1000s of tzedakah campaigns. Some things I kind of write in my sleep already. I feel like it's beautiful and it's a mitzvah. I really try to put heart into every letter, I hope somebody is actually reading it.
Years ago, someone asked me to translate the protocol of a complex case in Beis Din. As I was working on it, my heart went out to the client, and I couldn’t fathom how the other party could have perpetrated such a terrible crime. No one knew this, but six months later, the other side came to me because they needed the counterclaim translated. All of a sudden, I saw the story in a completely different light. I don’t know who was right, but it was a lesson in dan l'kaf zechus!
Is there anything that you would not translate?
Yes, it just happened. A client needed an academic essay translated urgently. About two pages into the text, I realized that the content was very problematic, critical of Rabbanim and in conflict with halachah. I didn’t know what to do because I’d committed to the client and he was relying on me, but I was pretty sure that the content was assur. My husband called a Rav who instructed me to stop immediately, even at a loss. I called the client and apologized that I could not translate the material since it violated my principles. To his credit, he understood and that was the end. Obviously, he never called back.
What’s your favorite frum fiction?
I love Maya Kenan’s series. The irony is that I always said that I would never read Hebrew for pleasure because it's my job and I do it all day long. When I first read The Betrayal in English, I loved it, and a few days later, I was walking in Geulah and saw a billboard advertisement for Mehalallel (The Outcast), which had just come out. It took me a second to realize that they were advertising the Hebrew sequel of the English book I’d just finished. It’s 900 pages in Hebrew, but I read it! For fun.
What are you working on now?
Yair Weinstock has a brand-new novel that I'm wrapping up now for Tfutza Publications. It’s an excellent read, reminiscent of his first novel, The Gordian Knot. It carries the reader to different countries and eras in Jewish history from the Haskalah to the Holocaust. My next book project is Agent for Hire #6.
🌹 Recent Releases for Shavuos Reading
Only Mimi by G Schiff
A hilarious girl describes her zany adventures, dairy style. For 4th-6th grade girls (Young Readers)
The British Escape by Leah Sokol
A choose-your-own-adventure historical drama for 5th-7th grade boys and girls (Young Readers)
Abandoned by M Kanan
A standalone novel (not part of Khazar series), a modern thriller-style take on M Kanan’s signature and unique style (Thriller)
Sisters and Strangers by Suri Epstein
Fresh plot, realistic and relatable characters, a light and easy read (Family Drama)
Windows to Conviction by Shia Moseson
The Rusvyaner chassidic court tackles a new round of challenges in this adventurous and fast-paced novelette collection (Literary Fiction)
Our Morah In Uniform: Biography of Rebbetzin Sara Murik by Fradl Adams
(Biography)
For more recent releases, browse our Pesach release roundup -