Iversen wrote:... but I'm not quite convinced that doing interlinear translations with word-to-word matches is worth the added time expenditure. ... I do however agree that you shouldn know the content of the constituent words even in idiomatic expressions where the real meaning isn't obvious and a totally different kind of expression would be substituted in a normal 'literary' trasnslation. In such cases I also prefer a literal translation plus a footnote containing the 'real' meaning.
I totally agree that it's a lot more work than worth especially for an individual language learner. But I hope that sharing them helps others as well where they'd want to get more comfortable reading faster without those frustrating moments were you don't know the meaning of one or more key words in a sentence. Also I'd like to add more idiom where the different order of the original may just confuse people. For Hungarian I had to add a lot more idiom and there's still confusing bits there.
Also, the reason there's no such material is probably because the time/cost expenditure like you say. The advantage of doing it though is the translation database that is built up which also allows other formats, like pop-up or interlinear on-demand, or even Glossika or Duolingo like set ups, multiple choice questions, cloze sentences, etc. Or even a side by side format with pop-up, or something, and though you'd still need an English translation, most copyright free books also have an English translation already available, or they would be easy to make.
Selling the interlinear books on Amazon has mainly helped with funding more translations and voice overs and building on the hyplern.com site a bit where we'll be experimenting on those different formats. Initially there was a free site and donations, but those totalled about $ 10.-- (2 x $5), so now it's still free on demand, but the sales although not very much are helping us to expand more quickly.
It's also not a method to stand on its own (as probably few are), more something to speed up learning to read and listen after a basic course. For Hungarian it did help me a lot to start reading after having done a basic course and not getting anywhere. If you don't mind "tedious" re-reading of the material