Welcome to Est. 1999, the official blog of Abraham Translations. As is perhaps easy to surmise, the name of this blog reflects the year that Abraham Translations was founded.
It all began with the correction of a few texts that had been translated by another time-pressed translator. Within the year, translating had become my main source of income; now, it has long been the only way I put bacon on the table.
I am rather proud of many of the projects on which I have worked.
Est. 1999, basically, is a visual confirmation of past projects, a blowing of my own horn, a presentation of translator-related topics, and an occasional departure into other areas that I deem worthy of presenting. Enjoy.

Thursday 15 October 2015

Head Cold / Schnupfen im Kopf

A Film by Gamma Bak, Germany 2010, Running Time: 92 min. In German, English and Hungarian.
Head Cold was the first of Gamma Bak's film projects that I ever worked on. I translated a variety of subtitles and text cards, the press release, and diverse informational texts. I'm not really sure how Gamma Bak came to use my services, but since then she's pulled me in on a number of projects in which she was involved, including her recent documentary Engelbecken, and the J. Jackie Baier documentaries House of Shame: Chantal All Night Long (2011) and Julia (2013).
German Trailer:
Over at imdb, hudsonwa of New York, New York, has a good synopsis/review of the feature-length documentary:
"A plain-spoken and honest answer to the question, 'What is it like to be psychotic'? To start, there is the great loneliness of serious illness. The title refers to a comment by Gamma Bak's partner at the time, during her first crisis: 'This is all like a head cold, it will pass.'
"Gamma Bak had her first psychosis in 1995, when she was thirty years old, working as a film director and producer in Berlin. Bak was supposed to be part of the free generation – a Jew from Hungary, who never knew totalitarianism, living a free and easy life in an open society. What she got instead was an adult life punctuated by seven episodes of schizoid-affective psychosis, in and out of psychiatric institutions, treated by a total of fourteen doctors and six psychologists, and prescribed twenty-four different anti-psychotic drugs over fourteen years.
"Bak tells her story through a series of interviews – with friends, ex-partners, colleagues, relatives, a fellow patient, and with herself – and clips from previous films, including East… West… Home's Best (1992) and Eine Frau und ihr Kontrabass (A Woman and Her Contrabass, 1994).
"There's no trace of exhibitionism in Bak's relentless gaze, and no voyeurism in this documentary. Instead, the film grapples openly with questions of responsibility for one's own life, and the necessity of walking through what cannot be overcome."
English Trailer:

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