[steve green] communications in Amsterdam provides English-language services to the arts, education and cultural sectors.
Translation and editing are the heart of what we* do, alongside a variety of related services such as subtitling and language coaching.
We can support you in getting your message across to your audience. Sounds simple. But it’s so easy to miss the mark – especially in a second language. That's where we come in.
Business was surprisingly resilient throughout the lockdowns, with many clients adapting quickly to the new situation and staging online exhibitions, festivals and plays, or shuffling schedules so we could continue working on disrupted projects. Now all the live events are back with a vengeance, but what's new is the re-invigorated focus on web-based content and experiences. So, lots to do around here.
2023: RIJKSMUSEUM, SCRIPT FOR VERMEER ONLINE EXPERIENCE, ART HISTORY, TRANSLATORThe Rijksmuseum’s rapid turnaround to digital exhibitions during the epidemic is really bearing fruit now. This year’s blockbuster Vermeer exhibition is accompanied by an excellent online experience that’s been beautifully narrated by Stephen Fry. Steve Green translated Stephen Fry’s script.
2022: STEDELIJK MODERN ART MUSEUM GROUP EXHIBITION, BOOK & WALL TEXTS, TRANSLATOR & EDITORThis edition of Stedelijk’s biennial group exhibition of proposals for municipal art acquisitions was exemplary of the new course being taken by the museum in recent years, with its radical exploration of magic, mysticism and identity. We edited and translated the wall texts and book for this major exhibition.
2022: AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS, BOOK, DUTCH MIME, TRANSLATORDutch mime is a distinct and thriving strand of theatre performance that's best compared with physical and experimental theatre. Academic researcher and mime expert Marijn de Langen wrote this definitive standard work on the subject to bring a rich and longstanding artistic phenomenon to a wider, international audience.
2022-2023: HOTEL MODERN, THEATRE PLAY AND SUBTITLING, TRANSLATORWe've been working with the internationally acclaimed 'live animation' puppet theatre group Hotel Modern for many years now. Steve Green recently translated a script for the company and will be subtitling more of their work in 2023.
2022: IMPAKT FESTIVAL FESTIVAL COPY, WRITEREvery year, and throughout the year, Utrecht's IMPAKT festival examines our relationship with technology through the lens of a new radical proposal. It's the place to contemplate our place in a technological world. We edit all the exhibition texts and communications, and translate them into Dutch.
2022: IDFA, FESTIVAL CATALOGUE, TRANSLATORThe world's biggest and best documentary festival was back in full force in 2022. Steve Green co-translated the programme guide.
2022: LEIDEN UNIVERSITY, BOOK, ART HISTORY, EDITORThe Royer Albums is a specialist work that reproduces the contents of the 17th-century Royer Albums, a remarkable series of hundreds of high-quality Chinese export paintings collected by the Dutch lawyer Jean Theodore Royer. The four authors of this prestigious bilingual Chinese- and English-language compendium are the acknowledged experts in their field in China and the Netherlands. Steve edited the book.
2022: BOOK, MODERN HISTORY, TRANSLATOR > FILM SCRIPTThe Occupied City by Bianca Stigter brings to life the history of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in the Second World War through the prism of vignettes about hundreds of individual addresses in the city. The result is a fascinating new perspective that stealthily delivers a powerful, vivid picture of what it was like to be in the city in that time.
Steve Green's translation of the book is the script for the upcoming major documentary and installation by Steve McQueen, the world-renowned director of films such as Hunger and 12 Years a Slave, and the 2020 Small Axe anthology.
The Netherlands is a unique environment for English: many Dutch people speak the language, English is the lingua franca, and a huge proportion of organisations use both Dutch and English to communicate. But being able to understand or converse in English is not the same as being able to write or present for an international audience. That’s where we can help.
Professionalism, expertise and accuracy are a given, but each assignment brings its own new challenges. That’s when flexibility, empathy and dedication come in. Writing is personal; reading is personal too. It’s all about connecting those personal experiences.
'Will my play connect with English speakers from many different cultures?'
'How should I strike the fine balance between preserving my authorial voice and not sounding awkwardly foreign?'
'My English is pretty good, but how will my presentation come across to a native English audience?'
'I write for fellow scholars in the Netherlands, so what’s the right tone for a more international readership?'
'How should I present my art in an authentic way that also connects to my public?'
Feel free to contact Steve Green for a no-obligations chat to find out whether our services match your needs.
* A little note on the use of the royal 'we' here: Although [Steve Green] Communications is a one-person business, many assignments involve other translators and editors. Props to Michael Blass, Steve Korver, Harriet Impey, Floris Dogterom, Astrid Staartjes and Mirko Stuiveling.
Journalist and author Bianca Stigter devoted many years to exhaustive primary research for this atlas of an occupied city, which presents the wartime stories behind many hundreds of specific addresses in Amsterdam. Each home, office, warehouse or headquarters is a fragment in a kaleidoscopic overview that brings all aspects of everyday existence in this occupied city vividly to life. 
In 2020, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam published The Surinamese School to accompany the eponymous exhibition. We translated this art-historical exploration of a previously under-celebrated phenomenon: the development of art, primarily painting, in the former Dutch colony of Suriname over the course of the 20th century. Featuring contributions from many experts in the field. We also supplied the English wall texts for the exhibition itself. 
Every two years, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam stages an exhibition of 'proposals for the museum collection'. The 2020 edition, titled In the Presence of Absence, featured work that challenges the idea of shared public knowledge, and shifts the focus onto what major public institutions have been ignoring. We translated and edited the extensive online pages for all 23 artists and collectives presenting their work.
Timo Demolin released his artist's book Visit (1883-2020) as part of his contribuition to the In the Presence of Absence exhibition (see previous entry). This intricately conceived and designed volume examines the crucial historical role played by the three major museums on Amsterdam's Museum Square in shaping perceptions of coloniality and modernity. We translated the author's extended conversation with Jan van Adrichem, the Stedelijk's Head of Collections.
Postponed due to the lockdowns of 2020, Slavery is the Rijksmuseum's first major exhibition of 2021. It marks something of a turning point in the modern history of the institution itself, in that as well as presenting new and loaned objects, it also reassesses work in the Rijksmuseum's permanent collection from a diverse, representative perspective. We were delighted to be invited to work on this important book accompanying the exhibition, which tells the stories of ten individuals whose lives were shaped in one way or another by slavery. 
The publications we have translated and edited for the Rijksmuseum explore a great variety of art- and history-related subjects, including the artists Alexander Calder and Henry Moore, furniture restoration and research, specific artworks such as the Bacchant by Adriaen de Vries, and interior design.
From 2014 to 2018 we translated and copy-edited a major series of eight books for the Rijksmuseum's History Department focusing on the historical relationship between the Netherlands and its trading partners and former colonies.
In 2017 we assembled and managed the team of eight translators and editors that completed the English and Dutch versions of Good Hope, the catalogue for the highly successful eponymous exhibition on past and present relations between the Netherlands and South Africa.
Other assignments for the Rijksmuseum include:Collector’s Cabinet with Miniature Apothecary, edited by Paul van Duin (Head of Furniture Restoration), the 'Beuning Room' issue of The Rijksmuseum Bulletin, and various academic articles and essays for the Rijksmuseum’s History department.
Designer Robert Bronwasser invited 
Photographer Jimmy Nelson invited 
We've been working regularly for the university for many years now, mostly for the two performing arts faculties: the Academy of Theatre and Dance (Bachelors) and DAS Graduate School (Masters). The range of work we do for them is exceptionally broad, and includes major internal documents such as accreditation reports, copy for the graduation books, essays, interviews and communications.
For several years we edited and translated the original Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD) graduation magazine Lift Off.
In a separate project, from 2019 into 2020 we worked closely with the directors of all departments at DAS Graduate School (Choreography, Theatre, Creative Producing and Research) to conceive, develop and write the school's new Strategic Plan.
One of many earlier publishing projects was Places to Play by the South African filmmaker and educator Jyoti Mystri, with the author examining her own activities as the artist in residence at the Amsterdam Film Academy and looking to the future of teaching and artistic research there.
This year they brought us in to work on Sweet Sixteen, a new play tackling the highly charged subject of teen suicide - with sensitivity, humour and refreshingly down-to-earth sense of reality. We translated this play for school-based performance that's designed to affect its audience and get them talking work on two plays.
Previous plays translated by 
Aimed at older children, the 2019 play Age of Rage unflinchingly tackles a range of highly topical societal issues such as poverty, racism, populism, mental health and broken families. We translated the play itself, as well as the accompanying educational and study material for schools
We also translated all the material for the international Theatre Cafe symposium that Toneelmakerij hosted in Amsterdam, and provided language advice and coaching for all the actors presenting plays to the international guests, as well as the script of the new original play Nadia and all the related copy for the eponymous, Europe-wide theatre project about a young Muslim girl caught between two cultures. 
