Aware of the image of their trade as a second-rate auxiliary occupation, translators invest efforts in advancing their occupational prestige and improving their status as professionals. This paper outlines some aspects of this dynamics as manifested in the field of literary translation in contemporary Israel. While non-literary translators reveal aspirations at sound professionalism, intended to institutionalize a professional closure, literary translators depend on a machinery of “stardom” which promotes the personal fame of select individuals. Seeking recognition as “artists”, their strategies of status claim entail (1) a mystification of their profession’s rules and requirements, and (2) the construction of an eccentric mythological “personality.