Nine of us gathered at John Alexander’s place in Amsterdam for an excellent sparring session over a glass of wine. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun discussing taxes!

Rob Bradley took the title of his presentation from Jean Baptiste Colbert, a French Minister of Finance under Louis XIV, who said that ‘the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.’

Rob described what it’s like working in this market niche:

Challenges

• Tax legislation is constantly changing, which means you always check and take nothing for granted.
• The Dutch names for specific taxes often don’t accurately describe what they are. Kapitaalbelasting, for example, is not capital tax. Fiscaal almost never translates into ‘fiscal’ (except in ‘fiscal unity’). So translate tax names literally at your peril!
• There are no official translations, so you need to choose a translation yourself that makes clear what the tax actually is or does. It’s good to picture your reader as a Japanese CFO.

Perks

• Good rates. Specialist translators are few, and the lawyers themselves earn such high fees that clients are not likely to complain about your bill.
• Steady income: no matter what stage of the business cycle, tax and tax-related translations will always keep coming.
• ‘The juicy bits’. Tax documents are about real businesses, and you’re likely at some point to encounter drama like bankruptcy, fraud or hostile takeovers.

We then discussed Rob’s handout (content available to SENSE members only), which followed a hypothetical company as it grows and starts to form a group – first domestically, then internationally. After that, we talked about what facilities and arrangements the company can use to optimize its tax situation, and how it interacts with the tax authorities. The handout provided attendees with Dutch and English terminology relevant to each stage in the company’s development.

Rob explained the many finer points brilliantly, like the difference between a vrijstelling and an aftrekpost, or between loonbelasting and loonheffing. He also explained base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) and the arm’s length principle.

Rob helped us understand how tax rulings used to work: the national government and the company negotiated the total tax bill the company would have to pay. Today, the company and its tax lawyers propose a specific corporate structure, and the country’s tax authorities provide advance certainty on its tax treatment. A ruling is far more tightly controlled and above board. Its validity is limited to four years. During that time, changes in legislation can override agreements in the ruling.

There was a lively discussion on the shift in public opinion on tax planning by companies. In just a few years, this has gone from ‘smart’ to ‘immoral’. Then and now, the object of tax planning is 100% legal tax avoidance, rather than illegal tax evasion. Let’s face it, none of us want to pay any more than we have to, whether we’re multinationals or freelancers! Though as one member remarked, it is some consolation to see your tax money relatively well-spent, as it is in the Netherlands.

One member said: ‘I thought the speaker was very knowledgeable and I will certainly use his handout in future as a reference. His understanding of his field and his craft are impressive.’

We wrapped up with a big thank-you for Rob and our host and convener John. Alison Gibbs has offered to present at our next meeting after the summer. Topics buzzed round, but she’ll let us know nearer the date. Watch this space!

For further reading, see the International Financing Reporting Standards (IFRS) as adopted by the EU (multilingual display optional). Individual language versions of more recent IFRSs are also available in English and in Dutch.

It was a fairly early start in Zwolle for the Eastern SIG meeting, but fortunately there was a Nespresso machine to help us wake up. The topic of the meeting was ‘levels of editing’, an idea that had arisen from a discussion at a previous meeting where Sally and Kumar had mentioned how different their editing styles are. Before the meeting, Kumar and Sally both edited a 300-word text (taken from a medical journal, though not too specialized). The text was also sent around beforehand, so that other members could have a try too.

The intention was that Sally and Kumar would compare their edits at the meeting and discuss them with the other SENSE members present. Why would you choose whether or not to change something? Are the changes justified? Unfortunately, Kumar had to leave almost immediately, but Sally was so well-prepared that this was no problem at all! For each sentence, we compared and discussed the changes that the two of them had made and compared them with our own edits − it was very interesting to hear the different approaches taken. We also discussed the assumptions that we made when editing the text, some of which were not always correct! (As also discussed in this thread on the members-only forum.)

Besides discussing the actual edits made, we also talked about what the editor’s job should/could be, and how this depends on the time available. We then went on to talk about client acquisition and contact with clients.

All in all, a highly informative and certainly well-attended morning!

I’ve been a loyal PerfectIt user since 2015, when I was faced with a 100+-page document with a style guide that required both odd hyphenation and the use of numerals for all numbers, even at the start of a sentence. Back then I was still trying to prove to myself that I was a good proofreader, but that document was the final nail in the coffin for that idea: I do have a keen eye for typos and grammar errors, but variations tend to slip under the radar. Noticing that there are ‘3 policymakers’ on page 12 and ‘three policy-makers’ on page 86? Not a chance.

I heard of PerfectIt through SENSE and it was just what I needed. The time I saved on that last read-through of that initial document paid for the licence three times over. These days, I run everything through PerfectIt and I have PerfectIt styles set up for all my regular clients. So I was thrilled when I got to take a sneak peek at the upcoming edition, PerfectIt 4.

No more ups and downs
The one dislike I had about PerfectIt was the inefficiency of mouse movements. Run a test, click on a highlighted sentence, move your mouse down to the bottom of the window to click on ‘Fix’, move your mouse up to select the next sentence, move your mouse down again, repeat for all the sentences in all the tests.

Of course, this is a minor niggle, because PerfectIt has had a robust keyboard shortcut system for years. Still, I am delighted that PerfectIt 4 gives each individual sentence its own Fix button. It may only save you half a second per fix, but that adds up over long documents and long work weeks. Not to mention avoiding the short, jerky, repetitive mouse movements that can be the most aggravating for RSI.

More elegance and speed
PerfectIt 4 is more elegant in other ways as well. You can now directly create a new style based on an existing one. The user interface has a more polished look. The initial scan time is reduced considerably, though I always liked to take that moment to stretch and pour myself a cup of tea.

All in all, should you subscribe to PerfectIt? My answer to that has always been ‘yes’, although I am enough of a dinosaur to miss the one-time-purchase option. Even if you have perfect hyphen sensitivity, PerfectIt will help you save valuable time. And with the upgrades in PerfectIt 4, you will be able to increase the consistency of your documents in a way that feels effortless, intuitive and elegant.

In 2009, the Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen (ELV), the Centre of Expertise for Literary Translation, published a plea entitled ‘Overigens schitterend vertaald’ ('Great translation by the way'), to maintain a flourishing translation culture in the Netherlands and Flanders. This plea motivated the universities of Utrecht and Louvain to collaborate and set up a literary translation master’s programme. Now, ten years later, the ELV is ringing the alarm bell once again, owing to a developing threat to the translation culture in the Low Countries, and has produced another plea, 'VerTALEN voor de toekomst’ (a play on words that roughly translates as 'Translation and languages for the future', not yet available in English).

Internationalization and ongoing globalization have increased the level of English speaking, reading and writing skills in Dutch and Flemish society. But they have also put other languages, including Dutch, under pressure. European languages are disappearing from the curricula of universities. These days, a mastery of English is often regarded as being sufficiently multilingual. The traditional Dutch openness and curiosity about foreign languages, which led to commercial and cultural success in the past, is giving way to a monoculture that focuses on English. We all admire the language skills of Frans Timmermans, who switches effortlessly from French to Italian to Russian to German, but he finds few followers in that regard. Whether on holiday or business in France or Germany, we expect to be able to get by with our knowledge of English.

The dwindling interest in foreign languages other than English is also affecting the supply of a new generation of translators, working both from and into Dutch. Add to that (or because of that) the poor compensation literary translators receive, and we see a declining number of students opting to study language or translation. The financial prospects are simply not good enough. This is reflected in the general lack of interest in literary translation among SENSE members, and their focus on language products that are financially more worthwhile.

An article by Abdelkader Benali, born in Morocco but now a leading Dutch author (Bruiloft aan zee, Brief aan mijn dochter), recently appeared in NRC Handelsblad. ‘Save the literary translator!’ he calls out, because the shortage of translators is a cultural disaster. Just like bees, they do their work in silence, away from all publicity, but without them an entire ecosystem falls apart. Without them, the possibility of contact with other cultures disappears. To get to know a country, Benali says, read its literature. Read the characters it creates, the stories that originate from its history, its silent tragedies. If Fjodor Dostojevski, Franz Kafka, Primo Levi, Albert Camus and so many others had not been translated, it would have proved impossible to gain the other’s perspective and to discover what has shaped the European landscape.

According to Benali, the translator risks becoming an extinct species because fewer students decide to study language. The low financial reward may be fatal to the translation profession. The ELV therefore calls upon the Dutch and Flemish governments to initiate a campaign: Kies voor taal (Choose language), analogous to the Kies exact (Choose science) campaign of some years ago. Likewise, it calls upon publishers and other clients to respect the standard amount mentioned in the Model Contract.

Could this be an opportunity for those of us working as legal, medical, financial or technical translators and editors?