Do you need a native speaker to go over the translation

Yes — and mostly not in order to catch mistakes. A native-speaking reader is the only person who can tell you whether the book sounds like a book or like a translation, and that is exactly the difference that decides whether readers carry on to the second chapter.

It is also the cheapest stage in the whole process, and often the first one people give up on.

What they catch that nobody else does

A translation can be entirely correct and still not work. Here are the kinds of things only a local ear hears:

Sentences nobody would say. Grammatically right, perfectly clear, and simply not how anyone puts it. That is the most common sign of translated text, and a local reader spots it in a second.

The wrong level of politeness. In Hebrew you address a stranger in the plain second person. Other languages distinguish between a polite form and a familiar one, and the wrong choice turns one character rude and another one cold — without a single word being wrong.

Humour that fell flat. A joke translated correctly is not a joke. Someone has to tell you that page 60 was supposed to be funny.

Names that sound odd. A name that reads beautifully in Hebrew can sound like a brand of cleaning product in another language. We went into that in why names change in translated books.

How to ask for it properly

The common mistake is to send a file and write "tell me what you think". The answer will be "very nice", and it will not help you.

Give three instructions instead:

1. Do not correct spelling and commas. That is not the job here.
2. Mark every place where you stopped because the sentence sounded odd, even if you cannot explain why.
3. After each chapter, answer in one sentence: does this sound like a book written in this language?

The third question is the one that brings back the real information. We went into the method in how to review a translation in a language you cannot read.

How much of it you actually need

If you have the budget and the time, a full read. If you do not, a read of three chapters catches most of the problems, because problems in translated text are almost always repeated — the same wrong choice gets made again and again.

Pick the first chapter, one from the middle and the last one. The first because that is where readers decide, the middle one because that is where the style settles, and the last because that is where the scene you most need to land is sitting.

Who is wrong for the job

Two kinds of people, who look like a good choice for exactly that reason.

The first: an Israeli who has lived abroad for many years and speaks the language excellently. They will understand everything, and that is precisely the problem — they will also understand a sentence that sounds translated, because their head thinks in Hebrew anyway and closes the gap without noticing.

The second: someone who loves you. A person who wants you to succeed reads generously and says it is all wonderful. Ask this of someone who has no reason to dodge an uncomfortable answer, and tell them outright that you are looking for problems, not compliments.

Why this counts as standard rather than indulgence

This point is not ours. The Authors Guild in the United States drafted a recommended contract clause stating that where automatic tools are used in translation, a human translator has to control the result and approve every word.

That is contract language, and an independent author is not negotiating with anyone. But the principle behind it holds just as well for someone working alone: at the end of the process there has to be a person who read it, and understood it, and approved it.

That can be a translator, an editor, or one good reader. What you do not want is for the only person who approved the book in the new language to be someone who cannot read it. The rest of the questions at this stage are in the frequently asked questions.