Dr. Herman Beyer is a senior lecurer in Afrikaans linguistics at the University of Namibia. He is a former president of the Namibian Association for Afrikaans teachers and a former member of the National Curriculum Committee for Afrikaans of the Namibian Ministry of Education, and still acts as a curriculum advisor for that ministry. His field of research is theoretical lexicography, and he is currently focusing on models for school dictionaries and the evaluation of such dictionaries, as well as the development of dictionary pedagogics. He contributed to the HAT Afrikaanse Skoolwoordeboek en is currently a member of the Taalkommissie of the SA Academy for Science and Art.

Rufus Gouws is the editor of the fifth edition of the Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (together with Francois F. Odendal) and professor in Afrikaans linguistics in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of Stellenbosch. In his research, teaching and post-graduate study guidance his main focus is theoretical lexicography. At international level he is a regular speaker at congresses, a guest lecturer and a visiting researcher. He is the author of academic books, numerous chapters in books and academic articles. He is a member of several international lexicographical associations and was the first chairperson of Afrilex, the African Association for Lexicography. He serves as editor for various leading academic journals such as Lexikos and Lexicographica. In the practice of lexicography he has contributed as editor to Afrikaans dictionaries such as Nasionale woordeboek, Basiswoordeboek van Afrikaans, Idiomewoordeboek and Woordeboek sonder grense. He is also an editor of the international Fachwörterbuch zur Lexikographie und Wörterbuchforschung/Dictionary of Lexicography and Dictionary Research and of the Afrikaans-Dutch bilingual dictionary. For his research and contributions to lexicography he has been honoured with several prizes, bursaries and awards.

Jana Luther studied literature and lexicography, obtaining a master’s degree cum laude at the Rand Afrikaans University in 1991. She started working for Tafelberg Publishers in 1991, initially as an editor of youth literature, before moving to the company’s dictionary section, which was incorporated with Pharos in 1996. She was responsible for the final edit of several Pharos publications, among others the first editions of Spreekwoorde en waar hulle vandaan kom (Anton F. Prinsloo) and Skryf Afrikaans (Dalene Müller) and the 2002 edition of the Afrikaanse woordelys en spelreëls (Taalkommissie of the SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns). During this time she also freelanced as translator, editor and proofreader for NB Publishers’ fiction and nonfiction sections, Tafelberg, Human & Rousseau and Kwela, and worked as a sub-editor in the newsroom of Die Burger. She was a co-compiler of New Words/Nuwe Woorde and co-editor of the Pharos Afrikaans-Engels-English-Afrikaans Dictionary (the editorial team of which the South African Translators’ Institute awarded their dictionary prize) and the Pharos Afrikaans-Engels-English-Afrikaans Concise Dictionary. In 2004 she was appointed as publisher of Pharos Dictionaries. In 2007 she worked as a sub-editor for Huisgenoot, before joining Pearson where she established a new dictionary section. She is the compiler of the HAT Afrikaanse Skoolwoordeboek and Sakwoordeboek (2009), and of the Longman-HAT English-Afrikaans/Afrikaans-Engelse Basic Dictionary, School Dictionary and Pocket Dictionary (2011) and is currently working as editor on the sixth edition of the Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (the HAT).

Tom McLachlan studied at the universities of Stellenbosch and Rhodes. After a brief stint in tertiary and secondary education he joined the Language Services Bureau in Pretoria in 1979 and has been a language practitioner and editor since, specialising in Afrikaans. In due course he became a specialist translator and editor of legislation in the Public Service. He ended his Public Service career as head of the Afrikaans Sub-directorate of the State Language Services, after which he joined the Language Services Directorate of Unisa, in 2002. McLachlan was elected member of the Taalkommissie of the SA Academy for Science and Art in 1995. He was one of the final editors of the 9th and 10th editions of the Afrikaanse woordelys en spelreëls (AWS), and served as deputy chair of the Taalkommissie for seven years before being elected chair in March 2012. He is a founding member of the National Language Body for Afrikaans, a substructure of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB).

Fred Pheiffer studied at UCT, obtaining an MA in Linguistics. From 1989 to 1992 he lectured at Wits in the Department of Afrikaans & Nederlands under Professors Edith Raidt and Gerrit Olivier. He was appointed as Hansard translator, editor and interpreter by the Parliament of South Africa in 1994. In 1999 he joined Pharos Dictionaries, then managed by Hans Büttner, as co-editor and compiler of the Pharos Afrikaans-English-English-Afrikaans Dictionary, the standard bearer of Afrikaans-English dictionaries. After its completion he was tasked with a more compact version of this dictionary, the Pharos Afrikaans-English-English-Afrikaans Concise Dictionary. In 2008 he joined Megan Hall’s dictionary team at Oxford University Press to project-manage Gilles-Maurice de Schryver’s Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: isiZulu and English, the first altogether new Zulu-English dictionary in four decades. He also worked as co-editor and compiler on the Oxford South African School Dictionary and the Oxford Afrikaanse Skoolwoordeboek. He has been active as freelance language practitioner since the mid-Nineties, working for Tafelberg, Human & Rousseau, Umuzi, Protea and New Media Publishers, on manuscripts by Marita van der Vyver, Annelie Botes, Petra Müller, Leon Rousseau and others. He is member of the copy-editing team of the Bible Society’s new Afrikaans Bible translation. His first attempt at fiction appeared in 2012 in Bloots, a collection of Afrikaans erotic stories.