Hi, I'm Robert de Jong
Author and book translator
I was professionally active in the world for more than 35 years and that made the world a bit of my home. If I had to
describe it in one word, I would call myself a traveler.
Writing has always been something that lived in me, and I collected a lot of scripts during those years. Now that I
have retired, the manuscripts are coming out. I have been converting them into stories for a few years. That works
quite well, said the publishers haven't discovered me yet.
Dutch and German are the languages in which I write and mainly focus on new readers, those who want to discover reading.
To stimulate that journey of discovery, I think it is important to make the story easy to read, and
the themes should mainly focus on now, the time in which we live.
Translator crossed in 6 languages
Crosswise I translate books from and to:
Dutch - English - German - Indonesian
(Bahasa) - Norwegian
(Bokmål) and Swedish.
My bookcases are mainly in Scandinavia and Central Asia. Translating books from these regions is
an incredibly beautiful task. I only translate previously unpublished books and preferably from the raw manuscript.
To maintain the core of a story and the atmosphere in which the story takes place, I have a lot of contact with the author during
the translation.
It's great when an author sometimes takes something from me and adapts the original manuscript. This also indicates that I sometimes improve,
clarify or adjust the story without losing sight of it. Ultimately it has to be a translation.
My latest translation, which I worked on for more than 3-years, is the manuscript from the story
Nordlys (Northern Lights - Noorderlicht). I translated it from
Norwegian to Dutch. It was a big job, but I enjoyed it a lot. You will find the translation, which resulted in the almost 1000-page
roman, alongside other translations under the tap books.