Services
Updated June 2026
We take on work with a shelf life longer than a quarter.
Seven directions. Each with a concrete outcome and boundaries put in writing.
Not for everyone. The details are below.
Translating a book or a long document into German or European Portuguese
Translation that does not flatter the translator.
Machine translation today is good enough that the client no longer sees why one should pay a human. He sees it when a German hands the page back and says: 'This has been translated.'
We translate long-form texts into German (Berlin diction — Heine, Brecht, Tucholsky) and into European Portuguese (the Lisbon standard — Saramago, Sophia de Mello, Eça de Queirós). First a draft through a machine engine, then our translator revises it, until a local reader would not stumble. Then the four-eyes stage: a second native reader goes over it again.
We take texts no shorter than one author's sheet. We do not do technical manuals; we do not do advertising slogans. We do the kind of text one reads through, not scans.
Suits you if the translation is to be released under CC BY-SA. Not for you if you need an anonymous translation under someone else's name.
Fact-checking and open-source research
A fact is cheap. A retraction is dear.
When a journalist publishes a fact that is refuted a week later, he does not lose one article. He loses the reserve of trust he has been earning for years.
We verify claims, cross-check biographies, and rebuild chronologies from open sources — state registers, press archives, academic databases, corporate filings. Every claim in our report is footed to a primary source. Not a secondary retelling. A primary one.
We work as an auditor in a bank does: until a fact is confirmed by two independent sources, it is marked yellow.
We do not help build a case against a particular person. We do not help fabricate a dossier. We help you understand what is actually in the open record.
Long-form investigation into a single subject (Lucerna)
Six months on a single subject.
When a question will not close with one report, what is needed is not another fact-check but a half-year immersion. We have a separate project for this — Lucerna.
It is a laboratory. Investigation, methodological notes, open sources assembled into a system. The kind of work that will not fit inside an encyclopedia entry but calls for the same discipline of verification.
We take it on if the subject is worth six months of work. And if the result can be published — slowly, perhaps, but in the open.
We do not compile dossiers on private individuals. We do not sell paid 'inside briefings for investors'. We do the kind of thing the client reads and forwards to a narrow circle.
A long essay or a signed piece of writing
If you have something to say, better not hurry.
When half the articles now are written in thirty minutes under the banner of the content machine, writing one good article over two weeks is already an act.
We write long essays of ten to forty thousand characters, on a subject the author knows more deeply than he can lay out in one sitting. We take the interview, unfold the argument, check the facts, build the story. The result: a text that could run in The Atlantic without blushing. The starting point: your voice, your expertise, your name.
Every publication carries the client's name. There should be no trace of us in the text. That is the whole point of the work.
Suits you if you want the text to sound like you. Not for you if you need it to sound 'like everyone else' for the algorithms.
An encyclopedia section or a book project
Work with a long memory.
Three encyclopedias are already open — Setubal (501 entries), padel (243), mushrooms of Portugal (164). Two are in preparation — the aquarium encyclopedia and the retro tech of the nineties. A sixth, tarot, is on pause — our hands do not reach it for now.
We build an encyclopedia from the glossary up to a full reference structure, with search, cross-references, and structured metadata. Six months to a year of work. Licensed under CC BY-SA, so the text outlives us.
We take it on if the subject is narrow and worthy. Narrow, because otherwise it thins out. Worthy, because in the FolkUp catalogue every encyclopedia stands under an author's own name.
We do not do startup encyclopedias or SEO farms. We do the kind of thing one reader will want to read to the end.
Illustrations for a book, a long essay or a site
A picture that is not trying to please everyone.
Illustration for the internet today is mostly made with a view to offending no one. It is neutral, symmetrical, harmless. A week later the author no longer remembers which picture ran with his last article.
We make illustrations in an editorial spirit, with the expectation that one of them will stay in memory. We work through Flux and a pipeline of our own edits (more on our AI practice). Every picture is seen by an illustrator before it is generated, not 'we ran twenty variants and picked the prettiest'.
Suits book covers, magazine spreads, a picture that carries a long article.
If you need a stock picture from Shutterstock for twenty euros, that is where you should go. If you need one picture of your own that will last ten years, we can talk.
A long-lived site for publishing
A site that will not need rebuilding two years on.
Most sites die not from technical faults but because the copy dates, the design ages inside half a year, and the tool wants updating every quarter.
Static generation. Content in a typed structure. Fonts served from our own machine. No hidden tracking.
Accessible to WCAG 2.1 AA, GDPR observed. The result: a site that three years on opens in a second and a half.
Twelve sites are already running.
We do not do commercial shops; we do not do landing pages that push the visitor to buy. We do publishing sites for a thoughtful readership.
Get in touch
If this sounds like your project, write to us: [email protected]. Andrei reads it.