There are downsides to creating and participating in a strong community - the inevitable sense of sadness and loss when a member passes away. That happened for us last week with the death of Walter Van Lerberghe, one of the key members of the volunteer team that produces the Dutch translation of TidBITS. Seven years ago, Walter first started to work with the French translation of TidBITS; shortly afterwards he helped start and maintain the Dutch translation, something he continued to do despite increasingly ill health in recent years. We don't know how Walter died, but he had been in hospital shortly before his death. Although he had written on July 6th to say that he would let the rest of the group know when he could start translating TidBITS again, that turned out to be the last message any of us received from him. We'll miss Walter, his editing of the Dutch translations, and the postcards he sent whenever he was traveling. He was 68.

Although there's no replacing Walter, the Dutch translation team, along with our long-standing French, German, and Japanese teams, could use a few more volunteer translators. So if you'd like to join a group of Macintosh enthusiasts in translating TidBITS into Dutch, French, German, or Japanese, check out the pages below for more information. And of course, if you're interested in starting or restarting another translation, just let me know. In particular, it looks like we may have a Brazilian Portuguese translation starting up again.

• Dutch
  <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/lang/nl/over- vertalen.html>

• French
  <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/lang/fr/ consignes.html>

• German
  <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/lang/de/ trans.html>

• Japanese
  <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/lang/jp/join_ us.html>