Alicia Gordon

In Memoriam
Alicia Gordon
1950 - 2004

Alicia Gordon died suddenly in her home in Topanga, CA, on January 19, 2004. She was 53. She is already sorely missed by the many who knew her in the translation and Macintosh user communities, in Southern California and more especially in cyberspace.

As for many of us, translation was a second or even a third career for Alicia. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and attended Hunter College High School, a competitive magnet school in Manhattan, where she graduated with honors. Upon graduation, she ventured away from the city to Beloit College in Wisconsin, where she majored in economics and minored in physics. After college, she ventured even further afield to spend a decade living and working in Europe. For two years, she taught English and business at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce et d'Administration d'Entreprises in Nantes, France. For eight years, she lived in Seville, Spain, where she coordinated an overseas study program for the University of North Carolina, studied music at the Seville Conservatory, played guitar or her flute in some flamenco rock groups, and worked as a translator on the side.

When she returned to the United States in the 1980s, she settled in Los Angeles and soon moved to Topanga, which she loved and then never left. She put her foreign-language skills to use in jobs as a sound engineer (she worked on the Spanish soundtrack of Star Wars) and production of advertising commercials, which led her deeper into the entertainment industry. As Gordon Artists, she became a talent agent representing jazz and international musicians, handling booking, management and public relations. Her clients included guitarist Pepe Habichuela and modern flamenco groups Pata Negra and Ketama from Spain, Limpopo from Russia and Ivan Lins from Brazil, for whom she arranged U.S. tours and, for the latter two, appearances at the World Cup in 1994.

In the mid-1990s Alicia switched careers entirely to become a full-time translator, renaming her business Gordon Word Artists. Alicia was a splendid example of how life experience, in-depth knowledge of many technical areas, curiosity, a passion for detail, persistence, and love of language can, without university translator courses, lead to success in professional translation – a career path of which Alicia was proud and which she communicated enthusiastically to others. She obtained accreditation from the American Translators Association (ATA) in Spanish to English and French to English and acquired the first of a series of Mac computers, of which she became an ardent devotee. She was soon working for clients around the world by phone, fax and e-mail from her remote canyon location. As she put it, she specialized "in subjects from the technical to the creative, with a broad base of knowledge to draw on in the areas of contract law and jurisprudence, business and marketing, high tech computer applications, audio-video, telecommunications and broadcast electronics, and I save a niche for the music and film business.” Her experience in the entertainment industry gave her an edge in subject matter related to it, especially broadcasting and licensing but not excluding adaptation of scripts for lip sync or subtitles. For the ATA conference in Los Angeles in 2002, she drew on her music industry background to book the band and make the arrangements for the Friday evening "World Dance Party" at the conference hotel.

Today translators take it for granted that cooperation across international borders and continents is the norm. A mere 12-15 years ago, however, this was something new. Through her indefatigable willingness to help a colleague, and her presence on the first non-university computer translation forum to be accessible anywhere in the world – CompuServe's FLEFO (where many of us first came to know her) – as a sought-after Mac specialist and regular contributor to the Wordfast user group (to which she had posted just days before her death), she was instrumental in establishing and maintaining bonds between translators everywhere, thus pioneering international cooperation between colleagues.

For her distinguished work, her commitment to her fellow-translators and Macintosh and Wordfast User Groups, and her never-failing willingness to help others both professionally and personally, we thank her one last time and pay our respects. The gap Alicia left will take a long, long time to fill.

Alicia leaves behind her only sister, Jane, and niece Jenifer who arranged this memorial site to celebrate Alicia's life.

Memories and photos of Alicia may be posted to this web site’s “Guest Book.”

Dear Alicia,

Above all else, I’ll always remember your gorgeous smile, always filled with mystery, communicating at once a knowing wisdom, a mischievous readiness for anything, and a genuine, heartfelt friendship. That smile just keeps popping up everywhere, in our most recent chats in Phoenix, and wherever our paths crossed: over sushi in LA, our barbecue blues adventure in St. Louis, just before you pushed me on stage to introduce Makina Loca, everywhere. I can even hear the sound of your lips splitting into a smile over the phone, the countless times you talked me into a job I couldn’t possibly accept, after finally snatching that perfect term out of thin air, or accompanying your insight into almost anything: the Grammys, politics, African literature. I’m taking that smile with me.

Wherever I go.

Kirk Anderson

Many thanks to her friends and colleagues, in particular Robert Killingsworth, Kirk Anderson, Manuela Cerruti, Judy Langley and Isabel Leonard, who provided significantly to this biography.