Asterisks.com: Who we are

Who we are
Asterisks.com is headed by experienced language professionals who manage a carefully selected team of editors and translators.

EDITORIAL MANAGEMENT

Helena Kolbe
Helena has been a translator-writer since the beginning of her career as a journalist some 30 years ago, after four years as a teacher in senior schools. Her experience includes writing, page layout and editing – as general reporter, sub-editor and news editor. Helena holds a B Honors (majors in Afrikaans and anthropology), a senior school teaching diploma and a masters in general linguistics.
Editing speciality areas: education, politics, government, economics, medicine, HIV/Aids, current affairs, finance, wildlife and nature conservation.

John Kolbe
John, with his bilingual English/Afrikaans upbringing and schooling, has 26 years experience in journalism, of which a decade in photo-journalism.
As a photo-journalist, senior sub-editor and editor of weekend supplements, he has extensive experience in writing, page layout and editing.

Editing speciality areas: medicine, sport, cinema, photography, wildlife and nature conservation.

Founder: Charl Hattingh

Charl founded Asterisks.com in 1996. During his career of more than 15 years in editing and translation, Charl has worked for Afrikaans and English book publishers, magazines and daily papers. He left the company in 2000 to pursue a career as clinical psychologist, but still acts as consultant to the Asterisks team.

Location
The Asterisks.com offices are located on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. The country is in the time zone GMT +2 hours. This helps us meet tight deadlines – we are up to nine hours ahead of clients in America and an hour or two ahead of those on the British Isles.
Team
Our editors and translators from all over South Africa have university qualifications in a large variety of disciplines, enabling us to work on almost any language project. We are dedicated to work of the highest quality, meeting deadlines without fail and ensuring that our clients are happy.
Clients
We provide language services for people around the globe – from individuals to research institutions, big companies and translation and advertizing agencies.

Security and privacy
Our privacy policy states that we do not share your information with third parties. This means that you won't get spam e-mail as a result of supplying your e-mail address to us, and that documents you submit to us are treated as confidential.