Geachte lezer,

A short note about the person on the other end of the address. I grew up bilingual in Dutch and English, in the Limburg Euregio, where Dutch, German and Belgian everyday life share the same train station. That accident of geography has shaped how I read and write ever since: with an ear for what doesn't quite belong.

Jacobs Language Services has been my full-time work since 2003. I started with finance and industrial machinery, added healthcare, software, automotive and media as the years went on, and kept the calendar small enough to stay involved with each project myself. There are no middlemen and no project managers; you write to me, and the work comes back from me.

Native bilingualism in Dutch and English isn't a credential I picked up. It's how I think. French, German and Italian are languages I work into Dutch and English at a professional level, with the same discipline. The promise across all of them is the same: nothing should read as translated.

Two decades on, I still find the work absorbing. A patent specification, a product launch page, a regulatory submission, an annual report. Different registers, different audiences, the same careful pair of eyes.

If we end up working together, you can expect direct communication, honest assessments of scope, and a missed deadline only when the alternative is a worse translation.