Dear reader,

A short note about the practice behind the address. It grew out of a bilingual Dutch and English upbringing in the Limburg Euregio, where Dutch, German and Belgian everyday life share the same train station. That accident of geography shaped how the work reads ever since: with an ear for what doesn't quite belong.

Jacobs Language Services has been at this since 2003. The work started with finance and industrial machinery, added healthcare, software, automotive and media as the years went on, and the calendar has stayed deliberately small. Every project stays close to the people doing it, from first brief to final read; no anonymous handoffs, and no layers between you and the translation.

Richard Jacobs Founder

The work runs in five languages: English, German, French and Italian into Dutch, and Dutch, German, French and Italian into English. Both target languages are native, from upbringing rather than study, which is less a credential than a way of reading. The same discipline applies to every pair, and the promise across all of them is the same: nothing should read as translated.

Two decades on, the work is still absorbing. A patent specification, a product launch page, a regulatory submission, an annual report. Different registers, different audiences, the same careful read.

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