Our Dutch translation of the world-famous Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy was cited to be an improvement over the English original in a variety of reviews. Over 1.5 million copies were sold in the Netherlands and Belgium. The approach and involvement of Textcase were an integral part of making the trilogy one of the bestselling books ever.
For the translation of the Fifty Shades trilogy, publisher Prometheus asked us to deliver a page turner: easy to read, with a linguistic focus on the characters and their expressions. The English original had one major problem: a rather tedious repetitiveness in phrases such as ‘Holy cow’. We were granted the freedom to introduce more variety in the translation. After various meetings with the publisher, we had a clear idea of what the final product should look like.
All three bulky books needed to be translated consecutively within eight weeks. This required us to form a translation team. During the translation work, the translators, editors and project manager kept in close contact about issues such as names, terms, mistakes in the original, etc. A single editor was charged with merging the text and ensuring consistency. The final step was to check the grammar.
During the translation process we are truly committed and discuss all issues and questions within the team. For this trilogy, these thorough discussions led us to realize that a certain character had blue eyes in part 1, and brown eyes in part 3. We also changed a scene in which a character kicked down the gas pedal and was speeding at no less than ‘110 kilometers per hour’. Because 110 kilometers per hour isn’t exactly breakneck speed in the Netherlands, we discussed the matter with the publisher and changed it to 140 kilometers per hour.
At Textcase we are used to completing large translation projects as efficiently as possible. A tight deadline does not affect quality. Read more about our book translations or contact us.