The penultimate paragraph in the full article (click on the "See: SF Gate" link above) is perhaps of greatest interest to translators:
Mitchell and Yoshida took turns editing drafts of the book, with Mitchell drawing upon his "high intermediate" level of Japanese, along with a dictionary and, Franzen be warned, the occasional search on his iPhone. The pace was "relaxed," said Mitchell, who all along was working on a novel of his own. A job that a full-time translator might have finished in weeks lasted about 18 months.
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