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Native speaker or not?
Nederlands

Here, a distinction must be made between legal and business texts.
I believe that for many legal texts, being a native speaker is not necessarily an advantage. In my experience, native speakers often fail to grasp the subtlety of such texts and sometimes they even fail to correctly interpret relatively straight forward texts. Let's face it; Dutch legal texts can be hard to understand. However, I do know some native speakers whose Dutch is good enough and they produce excellent texts. But in general, a Dutch native speaker may well be the better choice. Of course, their English must be excellent and if there is much at stake, it would be wise to have the English text checked by a native speaker. This way, one gets the best of both worlds. I myself am a bilingual and as such very suitable for this kind of text (See also: Profile); my grasp of Dutch is excellent and my command of English is 'near-native'.
Business texts tend to be somewhat easier to understand than legal texts and for these, it is also more important that the end result reads well. Here, a native speaker may be the better choice, although I know that I can also produce good quality texts in this field. I will always give honest advice to my clients in this matter.

See also my comments under: Freelance translator or translation agency?

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