News from JMS

Welcome to our blog, where we plan to feature news, views and translation clues. Things like: did you know that English cats say ‘meow’, German moggies ‘miau’, French felines ‘miaou’, and Spanish Siamese ‘miau’. Pause for thought…

The Inferno of Dan and Dante

Translation can be very intensive at times. We have been glued to our screens into the dark hours on many an occasion in an attempt to find the right word and meet a tight deadline. But we have yet to experience what sounds like the hell of the translators of Dan Brown’s latest tome, Inferno. The eleven translators experienced their own underworld in a windowless bunker near Milan for weeks on end, with restricted access to computers, mobiles, family, sunlight or normal life. Total immersion of a different kind.  They were even given cover stories so that inquisitive friends did not ask too many questions about their whereabouts. Not so much of a whodunit  but a whodunthat. All very hush, hush and rush, rush. The translated versions were published at the same time as the English editions and millions of copies have been sold around the world already. Not too hellish for Dan Brown I suspect. He has sold more than 200 million copies of his books so far. The most successful book we have worked on got into six figures but I doubt Dan Brown is quaking in his ‘Fortress of Gratitude’, as he calls his library…

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