In scenes of almost unimaginable cruelty rivaling those of a thriller written by some bestselling author, 11 translators working on various foreign-language versions of Dan Brown's just-published novel Inferno were kept locked down in a secret underground location in Milan last year. Forbidden to discuss their work with outsiders, they were banned from using the internet or mobile phones, fed in the the staff canteen at Mondadori, Brown's Italian publisher (owned by Silvio Berlusconi) and made to hand their work in each evening before being bused back to their hotels. And on top of all this, they were given a mere two months to translate a 480-page book!
(Posted May 19, 2013)