News
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Translating and editing for karres+brands’ new book!
Last year, I collaborated with karres+brands on the translation and editing of their new book. This beautiful Dutch-English bilingual edition contains fascinating images and detailed descriptions of their 2017 landscape architecture and urban planning projects. As always, it’s wonderful to see the final result in print!
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ELV Zomercursus Literair Vertalen 2017
From August 21st to 25th, I had the tremendous pleasure of participating in the ELV Summer School for Literary Translation in Utrecht. This year, the week-long intensive course put the spotlight on three languages into which there is a growing demand for translated Dutch literature: French, Turkish and English. As English translators, we learned all…
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Dutch Architecture Translation for Frits van Dongen
This past Spring, I had the pleasure of working with Elbert Arens, essay writer for Dutch architect Frits van Dongen, on their new retrospective book Frits van Dongen: 25 years, 25 works. The beautiful, shiny red volume is published by Spain’s TC Cuadernos, translated into Spanish and English. The project turned out to be a…
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Freelance Annual Report Writer for Amsterdam NGO
In the first half of 2017, I was commissioned by the Max Foundation to write their 2016 Annual Report. It was an enormous job, but the final result has been well worth the effort! Max Foundation is a wonderful Amsterdam-based NGO focused on providing clean water, sanitation and health services in South Asia and soon in…
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Takeaways from Translator Made Corporeal
This photo is what got me to theTranslator Made Corporeal event at the British Library in the first place. It was taken at the London Book Fair by photographer Julia Schoenstaedt as part of a portrait series revealing the rarely-seen faces behind literary translation. The project set the tone for the event, which aimed to…
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Urology under the Swastika
Did you know that hormonal treatments for certain andrological conditions were available in Nazi Germany, or that long before Viagra, erectile dysfunction was treated with something called ‘Testifortan’? Neither did I until I translated “The Suppression of Sexual Science: effects on the professional development of andrology and sexual medicine” by Dirk Schultheiss from German for the European Association…
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Residency at the Vertalershuis Amsterdam
As a translator, you constantly have to make decisions on what to do about these little things. Do you just translate them as they are and preserve the Belgian-ness of the book? Or do you convert them into something more familiar for your target readership? If you translate “hostie” to “satellite wafer”, are you then…
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Translating The Chronicles
“Language is my way of getting a grip on things, of maintaining control in certain situations. Your body is bombarded with zillions of sensory impressions, and by giving them a name, you make them one-dimensional again, manageable,” wrote best-selling Belgian author Lize Spit in her second blog post for The Chronicles. Actually, this is my…
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10 Common English Mistakes made by speakers of Dutch
The Dutch can be quite handy at “Englishifying” Dutch words. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it just doesn’t. I’ve been teaching and editing English in the Netherlands for a little while now, and here are 10 curious mistakes I’ve noticed.
