Here's an article from The Guardian about translating some of Dan Brown's books:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/30/dan-brown-origin-thriller-da-vinci-code-translation-les-traducteurs
Now, many years ago, I read in The Linguist, the journal of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, that the German translator of the Harry Potter books had had a nervous breakdown. So many puns in the names, for one thing.
I had, however, no idea that translators would be locked away to translate Dan Brown books under such a high level of security.
(By the way, I wrote 'literary' in inverted commas, because Dan Brown doesn't really write literature, but he does write page-turners, that's for sure.)
I found it interesting that the publishers felt they had to get the translations of Brown's books out on exactly the same day as the English version appeared because readers wouldn't wait for the translation and would order the English book instead. It just goes to show how widespread the understanding of English is these days.
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Blimey! I once read a really interesting article in the same journal about the challenges of translating the film title into various languages and markets. Well worth a read.
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