Classic Translations: Caveat emptor!

[Speakeasy]

It Started Here: (Bilingual Readers: Self-Prepared)
Recently, whilst searching for titles to include in the “Javanese Resources” file, I came across offers of what-appeared-to-be translations of several well-known classic novels, thrillers, and the like from the late 19th and early 20th century. As Javanese is a less-frequently-studied language, I included a few of these titles under the section “Bilingual Readers: Self-Prepared” along with the suggestion that students of less-frequently-studied languages might benefit from acquiring some of these translations in their L2, along with a copy of the original in their L1, and using the paired sets as bilingual readers.

Warlord of Mars (Armenian Edition).jpg

Not long thereafter, whilst preparing the “Lao / Laotian Resources” file, a similarly less-frequently-studied language, I came across the same group of translated classics.

Which Led to: (Commercial Viability / Quality of the Translations?)
So, I got to thinking: who would be behind this otherwise interesting contribution to the potential readers of these “distant” languages? What would be the potential market for such translations, the native speakers of these languages? Hmm, for cultural reasons, I have my doubts. So, what would be the commercial viability of such a catalogue? And then, I began to wonder: (1) who prepared these translations, Google Translate?, (2) how good are the translations, and (3) Why haven’t I heard about these works before now?

Footprints in the Snow (Publisher: Classic Translations, United States)
I searched AbeBooks and noticed that there is at least one publisher: Publisher: Classic Translations, United States - AbeBooks. However, my searches of the internet have not yet revealed who this publisher is, where they are located, and what their catalogue might include. To date, I have the following: (1) Pen America: Publishers of Works in Translation does not list “Classic Translations, United States” and (2) although the website of Bookmate includes “classic translations”, this seems to more of an online operation than a printing operation.

The Snow Melted, Leaving Nothing: (Information, Comments?)
At that point, the trail went cold. Would anyone happen to have any information on this publisher, their catalogue, the quality of their seemly broad range of translations or, even should someone not have any information, would they like to comment?

EDITED:
Title revised to include "caveat emptor!"

[aravinda]

I found two books in Sinhala: translations of From the Earth to the Moon by Yules Verne and Aesop’s Fables. You can’t look inside but they have short descriptions in Sinhala.
https://www.amazon.com/ඊසොප්ගේ-ප්-රබන්ධ ... 108781362X

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/3508-3 ... 1136380324

The translations contain actual words and phrases but the sentences are almost gibberish. One text even have single square brackets within the words and a lone vowel diacritic without a consonant.

They have 2584 titles on Barnes & Noble!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22Cla ... e+matchall

And they seemed to have operated under (at least) one other name: Sunflower Press. By the way, if you search Sunflower Press you end up with websites that deal with the production of Sunflower oil. Likewise, Classic Translations is too general a search term. They seemed to have chosen their names wisely for their purpose.

[Speakeasy]

… I began to wonder: (1) who prepared these translations, Google Translate?, (2) how good are the translations, …

I found two books in Sinhala: translations of From the Earth to the Moon by Yules Verne and Aesop’s Fables. You can’t look inside but they have short descriptions in Sinhala. … The translations contain actual words and phrases but the sentences are almost gibberish. One text even have single square brackets within the words and a lone vowel diacritic without a consonant … if you search Sunflower Press you end up with websites that deal with the production of Sunflower oil. Likewise, Classic Translations is too general a search term. They seemed to have chosen their names wisely for their purpose…

aravinda, thank you very much for your research.

It would not be unreasonable to conclude that Google Translate or some similar machine translation service was used to produce these “classic translations.”

Following your comments, I continued my searches and came across the names of three additional publishers, but was unable to locate them on the internet. I agree with your supposition that they appear to wish to hide their true identity (which causes me to question the vetting process that Amazon and AbeBooks use when listing suppliers).

All-in-all, the products are suspect. What a shame, as they might have offered learners of the less-frequently-studied languages a means for expanding their vocabulary and their appreciation for complex sentence structures.

I have removed my recommendation concerning these books from the Javanese Resources file. I have also revised the title of this thread to include “caveat emptor.” Once again, thank you very much for your research and your astute comments!

EDITED:
Typos, paragraphing.

[Evertype]

Sunflower Press offers a variety of books in various translations. I can confirm that they are NOT real translations. I have a copy of the "East Frisian" Alice in Wonderland, ISBN 978-957-9483-32-2 (a Taiwan ISBN). It is not in East Frisian. It is Google-Translated from English to West Frisian and it is not in any way acceptable.

Tiny Mulder's 1964 translation:

“Dy kant út,” sei de Kat en swaaide mei de rjochterpoat, “wennet in Huoddemakker. En dy kant út,” sei er, swaaiend mei de lofterpoat, “wennet in Maartske Hazze. Jo kinne se allebeide wol opsykje. Se binne beide net wiis.”
“Mar ik wol net nei healwize lju ta,” sei Alice.
“O, dêr kinne jo net foar,” sei de Kat. “Wy binne hjir allegearre gek. Ik bin gek. Jo binne gek.”
“Hoe witte jo, dat ik gek bin?” sei Alice.
“Dat moat wol,” sei de Kat, “oars soene jo hjir net kommen wêze.”

This book:

“Yn dy rjochting,” sei de kat, wuivende mei syn rjochter poat om, “libbet in hatter: en yn dy rjochting,” wuivende de oare poat, “wennet in marshars. Besyjke as jo wolle: se binne beide gek.”
“Mar ik wol net ûnder gekke minsken gean,” merke alice op.
“Och, jo kinne dat net helpe,” sei de kat: “wy binne allegear gek hjir. Ik bin lilk. Do bist gek.”
“Hoe wite jo dat ik gek bin?” sei alice.
“Jo moatte wêze”, sei de kat, of jo soene hjir net komme."

I pasted the English in to Google Translate and I got the following (I have marked the differences):

'Yn dy rjochting,' sei de kat, wuivende mei syn rjochter poat om, 'libbet in **Hatter**: en yn dy rjochting,' wuivende de oare poat, 'wennet in **Maarthaar**. Besykje as jo wolle: se binne beide gek.”
'Mar ik wol net **tusken** gekke minsken gean,' merkte **Alice**.
“**Oh**, jo kinne dat net helpe," sei de kat: "wy binne allegear gek hjir. Ik bin lilk. Do bist gek.”
"Hoe wite jo dat ik gek bin?" sei **Alice**.
"Jo moatte wêze," sei de kat, "of jo soene hjir net komme."

[mcthulhu]

I have a feeling this happens more than you'd think. A friend was telling me a few years ago that he'd received a Persian translation of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel as a gift, and quickly realized that it was an unedited machine translation from English into Persian. He read his way through it anyway, because he thought it was hilarious and it amused him to try to figure out how the many errors had come about; but it's probably a good thing that he wasn't trying to learn Persian from it.

[Keys]

They're on Amazon as well I see.

The same happened a couple of years ago with "dictionaries" from Michael Knight publishing.

Eventually there were 42,000+ different books in probably almost all languages that Google Translate carries, basically over a 100 per language with different titles, all with the same content, just an incomplete English word list translated do that language or vice versa. It came down to that they were pretending to be dictionaries.

Like in this case basically they were google translations.

It's done by people that take advantage of the possibility to automate the publishing process.

It seemed I was the only one reporting it on the community forum and to Amazon. In a lot of less popular languages these 100 fake books actually hid the real books for that language on search so for genuine publishers it was bad for sales. But it didn't seem to bother Amazon.

They removed it after like a month, then it came back with double the number of books, and finally after like half a year they removed the content permanently (respawned)

https://www.kdpcommunity.com/s/question/0D5f400000FHTZK/19123-fake-books?language=it this was my post (my baptizing name is Adrianus but my parents called me Kees which is a very Dutch name)

I guess it's harder to get rid of these unless everyone reports the books with all these sellers. Who knows might even be the same person behind it.

I think I also saw regular English books once that were basically gibberish, but those seemed more like machine written nonsense with catchy titles.

If you sell 40k different books there are bound to be people buying it so statistically you can get rich of this con.