International Publishing
CPM has produced a number of UK and US editions of lavishly illustrated reference books for Parragon, covering lifestyle, cookery, arts, gardening and crafts. Titles have ranged from Michelangelo, Yoga, Monasteries and 100 Diving Sites to A Concise Guide to Roses, Make Your Own Jewellery and our personal favourite Cooking for Your Dog.
Illustrated with inspirational photography of amazing bodily contortions, this title provides in-depth descriptions of the history, philosophy and practice of yoga and so required a specialist translator and copy-editor. By good fortune, one of our regular proofreaders turned out to be a keen yogi, and was therefore the perfect person to join the team. Fitting the (inevitably shorter) English text into the German design took creativity and an element of problem-solving, as well as a bit of help from one
of our German-speaking project editors.
Scope of the project:
Full project management; commissioning German-to-English translator; typesetting; proofreading; delivery of print-ready files for co-edition printing.
This title covers not only the diving sites themselves, but also the flora and fauna that can be observed while diving. Since the common names for animal and plant species can differ between American and British English, we commissioned a specialist American copy-editor, based in the US, to review the translation. A science editor and writer holding a degree in Marine Science and at the time teaching oceanography at university level, she was a perfect match for the project.
Each diving site comprised a fact box with information such as depth and water temperature. These fact boxes presented us with a particular problem: while the German edition had provided only enough space for metric measurements, the dual English edition needed both metric and imperial. Fitting in both sets of measurements was something of a challenge!
Produced in the middle of winter, this inspiring title brought some welcome sun on to our desks.
Scope of the project:
Full project management; commissioning German-to-English translator and specialist American English copy-editor; typesetting; proofreading; delivery of print-ready files for co-edition printing.
Benezit Dictionary of Artists for Éditions Gründ
CPM managed the first ever English-language version of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists on behalf of Éditions Gründ in Paris, a project that spanned three years. Used primarily by museums, galleries and auction houses, this extensive encyclopedia gives biographical information about painters, sculptors, designers and engravers from antiquity to the present day.
The 14-volume encyclopedia, with over 20,000 pages and 170,000 entries, required over 50 translators, more than 25 copy-editors, plus scores of subject specialists who wrote thousands of new entries and checked, updated and improved the existing ones.
This mammoth reference work was organised alphabetically – unlike our translators’ and subject specialists’ areas of expertise. The entire text had to be pulled apart and divided according to period and movement, before being put back together alphabetically. We did this using a proprietary software program that CPM had helped to test right at the beginning of the project. So not only did our project editors have to deal with the usual day-to-day management of the project, but they also had to be the first line of IT support for more than 100 suppliers.
Unusually, we didn’t deliver print-ready files, but Word documents that populated the database from which the book was printed.
This remains one of the projects that we are most proud of, on account of its sheer size and our successful completion of it. The English version of Benezit is widely regarded as the most up-to-date reference resource in its field, and as capable of meeting a much wider audience than ever before.
Scope of the project:
Full project management; commissioning French-to-English translators and specialist copy-editors and proofreaders; typesetting; delivery of final Word files.
Testimonial from the client:
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for your valuable contribution to this monumental project. Without the hard work of you and your excellent team, these fourteen volumes may never have seen the light of day. To reach such a high level of quality while keeping to a tight budget and deadline is quite some achievement. Please rest assured that we will warmly recommend your services to our colleagues in the trade.
Alain and Antoine Gründ, respectively Chairman and Director of New Technologies, Éditions Gründ
Some reviews of the encyclopedia:
‘The standard biographical listing of artists, outdoing similar resources in both size and scope’
Library Journal, June 2006 (*Starred Review)
‘One of the art world’s more important dictionaries’
ARTnews, Summer 2006
‘The book of first (and last!) resort’
Choice Magazine, February 2007
‘The largest up-to-date compilation of artist biographical information in print’
Art Libraries Journal (ARLIS UK & Ireland), March 2007
‘The classic and seminal reference publication’
Art Documentation, volume 6, no. 1, 2007