Proud to Announce! Winner of the TLS Risa-Domb/Porjes Prize for Translation from Hebrew to English

At first I thought it was a spam email. And then I realized it was real! While on vacation in Singapore in February, I received word that I had won the above prize for my translation of the novel I translated: House on Endless Waters, by Emuna Alon.

Here is the link to the announcement.

The Society of Authors even offered to help finance my flight and hotel stay if I wanted to come to accept the prize in person. Perhaps had I been in Israel, I would have taken them up on the offer. To be a VIP for once in my life! Unfortunately, I was right smack in the middle of a trip to Singapore and Thailand, and even though I dreamed, and checked out flights back and forth to London (or to London and then straight back to Israel), my real problem was my wardrobe. All I had was shorts and tops and sandals, and it was February in the UK. I would have had to spend all my prize money (2000 pounds) on a decent dress and warm clothes (which I had back at home). So much for that!

Instead, I recorded a short (too short, I think) acceptance speech for them to play with the announcement. (Which if I had to do over, I would change…ah well…doesn’t really matter).

Naturally, I am extremely proud to have won this prize but, as they say, you can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear, and I definitely had great material to start with.

In a related event, the book (in English) was chosen as book of the month for the Rehoboth (Delaware, USA) book club, and they invited me to do a zoom event with them to give them some insight into how the translation came about. That was fun.

As I say, over and over, I LOVE MY JOB. The truth is that most of my work is academic — which is also fun — but once in a while, a great book like this comes along and makes me so glad I joined the MA program in Literary Translation at Bar Ilan University when I did, ten years back in 2013. (Unfortunately, this program has since been cancelled.)