Working languages:
English (monolingual)
Dutch to English
German to English

Henry Jansen, Ph.D.
fast and reliable all-round translations

Almere, Flevoland, Netherlands
Local time: 04:19 CEST (GMT+2)

Native in: English 
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Bio
Please visit my website, www.wordfair.eu, where more information about my experience in translation, expertise, project history and references can be found

Allow me to introduce myself:
- more than fifteen years' experience in translating and proofreading texts for scholars and academic publishers, in addition to continuing to publish my own works in my areas of expertise.
- because of my official role as editor in this work, I am often the last person to see the manuscript before it is sent to the publisher.
- my extensive education and wide-ranging interests have given me a broad grasp of several subject areas, in addition to my own areas of expertise.
- my particular skills also include being able to set a text for publication according to publishers’ specifications.


My approach to translation and editing/proofreading:

The name of my website, "wordfair," captures in one word my approach to the task of translating and editing/proofreading. It suggests the image of the carefree jumble and mix of people meeting and interacting, if only for a second, in an atmosphere of laughter and excitement. It suggests the excitement of children running around, faces and hands sticky with cotton candy and candied apples, adults who for a few hours can again be children and experience the wonder of the world.
Words, obviously, have to do with communication and the word "fair" indicates, as much as the circus in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, in John Irving’s Son of the Circus or Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy, the place of the imagination, of creativity, of life itself. And communication is life. It is how we live with one another and how we interact on all levels of society. Fiction, newspapers, technical manuals are all part of this wordfair.
In the same way that a ride at a fair or simply savouring the childhood taste of cotton candy can fill us with wonder, so too words should grab us, hold our attention, fill us with wonder and lead us on to the next word, sentence, paragraph, page.

This explains my approach to both my own writing and to my translation and editing work. Translation, as much as our own writing, is a work of the imagination. This is so, first, because writing itself is an act of imagination, a creative process in which we are entirely involved. A text that does not involve us will not be a good text. In the second place, this is so because the act of translation requires an additional exercise in imagination on the part of the translator. The translator must transpose him- or herself into the writer's mind, to hear and see what the writer saw and heard while writing. And that is what I see as the translator's task: not simply to translate words but to translate the sense, the meaning, the intention as best I can.

"Wordfair" - it is thus, by invoking the imagination, that I can best serve my customers' needs.
Keywords: academic translations, editing, literary criticism, theology/religion, philosophy, history, tourism, arts, culture, creativity. See more.academic translations, editing, literary criticism, theology/religion, philosophy, history, tourism, arts, culture, creativity, imagination, setting texts for publication. See less.




Profile last updated
Sep 21, 2015