Gideon Toury was born in Haifa, the first child of the historian
Jacob Toury (1915–2004) and his wife Eve. He completed high school at the Reali School in
Haifa in 1960. After high-school, he did his military service in the Nahal Brigade and the paratroopers and as part of his training was sent to a kibbutz, to help out with the farming. He lived there for six years, and he ended up editing the kibbutz journal and organizing cultural events. This experience helped him obtaining a position in a children's journal, where he did his first translations, and later as the editor of the Hebrew version of
Popular Photography. He graduated with honors in Hebrew language and Literature at Tel Aviv University in 1970, and completed a PhD Literary Theory at the same university in 1977 on the topic of
Translational Norms and Literary Translation into Hebrew, 1930-1945. In 1980 he won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his translation into Hebrew of C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He was the first chair professor in CETRA, the research program in
Translation Studies created by
Jose Lambert in 1989. In 1999, he was awarded honorary membership of the UNESCO Chair of Translation Studies at Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2000, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by
Middlesex University, London. From 1970 to 1983, he worked with
Benjamin Harshav,
Itamar Even-Zohar and
Menachem Perry in the journal
Literature and in 1989 he founded
Target, International Journal of Translation Studies and has been general editor since. He is also General Editor of the
Benjamins Translation Library. He was also a member of the boards of
The Translator and the
Translation Studies Abstracts until he was "unappointed" following the decision of
Mona Baker to boycott Israeli academia. == Research ==