The Dan Brown Code

You don't have to speak with many people in the book world to understand that nothing has been the same since The Da Vinci Code. The novel, published in 2003 (2004 in Sweden), has sold 80 million copies worldwide — 1.1 million in Sweden alone. Over 700,000 of these were in hardback, making it by far Sweden's bestselling hardback book of all time. Now, five years later, the sequel has finally arrived. To say that the expectations of the publisher, Albert Bonniers förlag, are sky-high would be an understatement. At the same time, the translation has been surrounded by complications unlike any the industry has ever seen.

"We signed the contract in 2005, long before the book was written. This might happen once in a while, but it's far from a usual scenario," says Jonas Axelsson, Publisher at Albert Bonniers förlag. "But just before the summer, conditions changed radically, as Dan Brown and his agent decided that none of the translating publishers would have access to the manuscript before the book was published in the U.S."

The reason for this unusual requirement was clearly a fear that the content of the book would be leaked in advance. After all, it has happened more than once that an unpublished manuscript has appeared on the Web. But for Jonas and his colleagues, the situation would mean a considerable delay before the book would be available in Swedish unless they came up with a radical solution.

"We started thinking about using more than one translator, for the first time in Swedish publishing history. This happens occasionally in other countries, especially in Holland, and when I started calling the other publishers in Europe I realized that others were thinking the same thing. The Germans had decided to put six people on the task, and I thought: 'Why don't we do the same?' It should be possible for each of the six translators to cope with 100 pages - or as it ended up, 85 pages — in seven days."

And that was that. Jonas then chose six translators, explained the exceptional circumstances to them, and they all accepted the conditions. A few other preparations were needed as well. Since it was well-known that the novel would be about the Freemasons and take place in Washington D.C., the publishers were able to make a rudimentary list, a few pages long, of typical Freemason terminology, the names of buildings in Washington and so on, which the translators could use as a basis. As soon as the book arrived, it was immediately sent to each of the translators, who began working in parallel on each of their sections.

"It was up to them whether they wanted to read the entire novel first, or just their own section, but I think they all read the whole book," says Jonas. "Keeping constant mail contact with one another, they discussed various translation issues throughout the process. Now that we've received all the parts, two proofreaders and an editor are going through every detail. They have 48 hours to do this. Then there will be parallel readings by at least four different people."

This is of course an extreme approach, and it has received some criticism. Can you do this with any novel?

"Definitely not! There are very few writers who you can treat like this. I would say that Dan Brown is one of them. The reason is his style: He's an extremely entertaining lecturer, which makes it possible to find a consensus between the different translators. Of course, the readers shouldn't notice any discrepancies between the different parts of the book. If they do, then we've failed."

So what do you think of the book?

"Given the unusual circumstances, I have to admit I was a little bit nervous. I wondered, 'could he really do it again?' But when I finally had the chance to read it, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Anyone who liked The Da Vinci Code will not be disappointed. It's 100 percent entertaining - an incredible page-turner! The story takes place in Washington D.C., a place I never thought I'd want to visit, but now I want to go there. He does for Washington what his previous books did for Paris and Rome, so I'm sure the people at Washington's Tourist Board are rubbing their hands in anticipation. It will also be exciting to see who will play the arch villain in the movie."

How important is The Lost Symbol for Albert Bonniers förlag?

"It's the book that will boost our sales to an acceptable level this year. Without it, things would have been quite grim."