My name is Tomáš Pavelka. I have been translating since my secondary education. Back then, I wanted to translate a chess book, Masters of the Chessboard by Richard Réti, a Czechoslovak author who wrote in German. Later on, I had the opportunity to proofread a book by Neil Moffatt, whom I got to know on the Internet, Health Matters. This book has been my challenge in translation ever since, and so I decided to study translation. After leaving my secondary school, I enrolled in the Institute of Translation Studies at Charles University's Faculty of Arts.
During my studies, I started working as an individual tutor of English and translate for money, mostly technical texts and OSH & Fire safety documentation. Recently, I have started subtitling as well.
I understand translation as an act of creation, where a new, equivalently functional text is created based on the original (if you are looking for a word-for-word translation, you are not in the right place; a word-for-word translation can never be functional, except for certain types of technical translation). Translation should be such that it works for the customer. This can be seen mainly in marketing texts where the translation must adapt to the target culture in order to appeal to people of that culture.