A letter arrives from the Belastingdienst, the gemeente, the IND. It is in Dutch, it uses the vocabulary of the institution that sent it, and somewhere inside it there is a date. Dubhe takes a photo of that letter and gives back what it says, what it is asking you to do, and by when — in a language you actually read.
Free, no registration, and it works on the phone in your hand at eleven at night, which is generally when the letter gets opened.
People living in the Netherlands whose Dutch is not yet good enough for a letter that was written by a government department.
Households where one person ends up translating every official envelope for everyone else, usually badly and usually late.
The cost of misreading one of these letters is rarely the letter. It is the deadline inside it that was missed.
The useful part turned out not to be the translation. A translated letter from the Belastingdienst is still a letter from the Belastingdienst. What people needed was the reason it came, the action inside it, and the deadline — which is what it gives back.
We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people. Sometimes we aren't, and we'll say so in the first email rather than the third meeting.
hello@stupidgood.co