As a fan of Jules Verne, it's an unfortunate fact that many of his lesser known works (and he has a lot) do not have a good English translation. Many of the old, public domain translations are deficient, while modern translations tend to be good, so I'm alway interested in new translations.
There are now plenty of "new translations" being sold as ebooks in Amazon. But looking through them, it's the original French text (which is in the public domain) passed through an automatic AI translator tool, without even a revision afterwards, which allows you to follow the story but makes many sentences awkward to read. As the original books are in the public domain and not under copyright, scammers do this to try to trick people into buying without being aware that they are buying an automatic AI translation.
I'm not linking, because I think it might break the sub's rules, but for example, if you search amazon for "David Petault", which is the name one such "translator" uses, you'll see dozens and dozens of "New Translations in Modern Accessible English" of old classics. Please don't fall for such tricks.
by farseer6
5 Comments
Yikes.
AI slop taking over everywhere.
I could understand if they were free, since the person “publishing” such as book has done no work whatsoever, but if they’re charging money, that could constitute fraud.
That’s awful. Thanks for posting about this. If you bought this “new translation” crap, I recommend you request a refund or file a dispute with your credit card company. They were clearly misleading their customers since the person who was supposed to have done the translation does not even exist.
enshittification of literature, great…
Looking for classics on Kindle has always been a headache, especially if they’re in the public domain. Best to throw in a reputable publisher like Penguin into the search to find a decent edition.