One I was particularly interested in didn't have a review, but another one I looked at from the same publisher had two - very bad - reviews and both mentioned that they looked like un-checked google translations.
I then noticed that there were quite a few other books that had a similar "look and feel", although none of them happened to be reviewed.
One was "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne (in Welsh).
I was fooled at first by the first one as it mentioned what I assumed was the translator's name (in addition to the well-known name of the original English-language author). So I searched within Amazon for his name and found a Romanian version of the same book.....
...well, I suppose he could be a polyglot translator, but this was sounding more and more suspicious to me, and I certainly now wouldn't buy the book I had been thinking of buying, or the Jules Verne on.
In view of certain events on this forum in recent-ish weeks (which I still feel very sore about, as it happens
) I'm not going to mention any names of publishers, translators, or whatever, but I just throw out the general question to fellow forum members: Is this a growing problem, as perhaps machine translations become (at least superficially) "better", and what we innocent language-learners think are "real" translations are not quite what they seem?Has anyone actually been "burned" by this? (Feel free to PM me - I don't recommend mentioning any very specifics on here, at least not in this thread thank you).
People are often advised to look for parallel texts and/or translations, so it would not be surprising if people could be taken in, especially for the less-popular languages where good quality translations are in short supply, and people might be tempted to seize on what looks on the face of it like a good opportunity.
If anything, this has reminded me of my original advice to myself to try only reading TL books which were originally written in the TL, although that is admittedly sometimes a counsel of perfection.
Edit: I now see there is also a "Norwegian" version of the first book I was referring to, and it has a bad review, complaining of an unchecked google translation by someone who wasn't a Norwegian speaker. *sigh* So my suspicions were correct, it seems.
Oh, and several other languages as well, but I won't bother looking any further.
Although they might have people or subcontract to people who are able to double check texts. So I assume only if there's enough backlash via reviews and complaints they might ban the publisher.
