Jan Ferdinand de Zanger was born in Schiedam on 4 July 1932. He came into contact with Scandinavia early in his life. He was sent as a malnourished boy to a farm in Jutland in August 1945 to regain his strength following the liberation of the Netherlands.1 During and after his high school years, he spent almost all his holidays in Denmark, and later also in Norway and Sweden. He learned perfect Danish during that time. Surprisingly, he opted to study a different language after high school – Dutch. From 1957 he worked as a teacher of Dutch,2 but the Scandinavian languages retained their appeal for him. His first translation was published in 1961 and he went on to translate more than sixty works from Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and German. His translation oeuvre was very broad and included both non-fiction books and novels by well-known authors, such as the Dane Klaus Rifbjerg (1931-2015). Part of his translation oeuvre also comprises poems and children’s literature. He himself became known as an author of children’s books.