Sometimes investing time and effort beyond an expected service does pay off in unusual ways. This happened when I was challenged with the translation of books on magic tricks for children which had been translated from several languages into English. As often happens with this kind of source material at best something had been “lost in translation” and at worst some sentences were completely mis-translated … all of which would have a devastating effect on the efforts of the poor little aspiring magician who is trying to follow the instructions. No doubt they would end up with their hands tied by a piece of rope with lots of knots in that cannot be undone. Instead of the little boy or girl stepping into the footsteps of the great escape artist Houdini they end up in tears of disappointment. So that left the poor translator – me – tearing my hair out trying to work out how to translate the wrong English into correct German instructions! In this situation there was nothing for it but to plunge in and try the tricks myself using the magic box provided by my client. When in doubt, I tried a trick over and over and … when I was pretty confident that I had got it right … I showed it to my partner. That means he spent a fair bit of time with his hands tied up in knots but I think he’s forgiven me! I also obtained confirmation of “my version” from my client who consulted their professional magicians to get the final okay or an amended version of the trick. By doing this for several weeks I quite got into “doing magic” – something I otherwise would never have been interested in – and I am determined to carry on practising some of the tricks with the aim of doing a little magic show at my nephews 11th birthday party! I’ve got the gear; I need to practice and then … Hocus Pocus … German Translator turns into German Magician! 
