“I acted as a project manager this year (2016) for textbook submissions for Grade 8 and 9 books for Zebra Publishers in Namibia. The work included the commissioning and development of a new Afrikaans First Language Course. Late in March the MD of Zebra Publishing contacted me to ask whether it might be possible to adapt the Afrikaans course for English as well. This was a daunting challenge. It would require not only direct translation but at least a third of the Afrikaans reading text and grammar work would have to be creatively reworked. I could think of only one translation company to entrust with such a project: BLC They had assisted me with translations for the South African curriculum when I worked on contract for Oxford University Press as a Senior Commissioning Editor a few years ago. For the Zebra project, BLC did a combination of translation, development, creative translation and research work. The total volume of the text delivered between 2 and 20 April was 150 835 words. Han Sapire from BLC managed the entire translation project. Han also checked and proofread all translations before they were submitted to me, freeing me up to focus on getting the manuscripts set and checking page proofs before the submission date. They also followed my instructions to retain the styling of the original Afrikaans, which enabled the setters to run in the English smoothly over the existing Afrikaans layouts. The project was a success, both in terms of quality and meeting."