Translations by "Amazon.com" Thread poster: Muriel Vasconcellos
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Yesterday I was asked to translate the Spanish classic "Zalacaín el Aventurero," which I remembered from Spanish class decades ago. I found an existing translation on the Internet and told the client the book could be purchased at Amazon.com, giving him the link. This is the answer I got back:
"My client does not want this so called Amazon.com translations. He required the text being done by a pro."
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Marina Steinbach
United States
Local time: 00:16
Member (2011)
English to German
| Interesting... | Jun 23, 2012 |
Muriel Vasconcellos wrote:
"My client does not want this so called Amazon.com translations. He required the text being done by a pro."
Did you get the job?
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I'm as curious as Marina, did you get the mandate to translate the book ???
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If he wants it like that, take it, I suggest
[Editado a las 2012-06-24 04:20 GMT]
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ATIL KAYHAN 
Türkiye
Local time: 07:16
Member (2007)
Turkish to English
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| Translations by Amazon? | Jun 24, 2012 |
To my knowledge, Amazon does not make any translations. The book suggested by Muriel was probably translated by a pro. As far as the client is concerned, there is no guarantee that this translation will be better than the existing book. Of course, the client is not even aware of these facts.
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| Not necessarily | Jun 24, 2012 |
My wife uses an e-book and the translations you get out there for many books are atrocious. What I think the customer wants to say is that they don't want one of those e-book translations done by... who knows!! (I am talking about English-Spanish.)
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nuvo
Indonesia
Local time: 11:16
English to Indonesian
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| Amazon does not translate | Jun 24, 2012 |
I had a few experiences translating e-books to be sold at Amazon. However, it was not Amazon who gave me the job. It was the author. So, we may have the assumption for your case
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| I have had exactly the same correspondence | Jun 24, 2012 |
Very dodgy translation request, to which I replied that I would give a quote if, amongst other things, he ("Lawrence") gave me company details. No company mentioned of course, but he sent the text, and I too suggested he look on Amazon where he could find a translation.
The reply was that
"We needed something a bit different from this translated work."
If this was a translation of a literary work, why didn't he present it as such?
Strange....
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Henry Hinds
United States
Local time: 22:16
English to Spanish
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In memoriam
This looks like just another scam attempt.
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| The author's permission | Jun 24, 2012 |
The person who approached you with the request to translate the book for him needs the author's permission to do that if the author is alive,otherwise from the person who holds the copyrights. Otherwise you may both end up in jail. Maybe I am exaggerating, but you may get in a lot of trouble.
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Muriel Vasconcellos
United States
Local time: 21:16
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Interesting that Noni had the same experience! I assumed he thought that Amazon.com was machine translation. I didn't think it was a scam--just a case of colossal ignorance.
I sent him the translator's credentials and repeated that the book was available for purchase (giving him the Amazon link once again).
I had already refused to do the job, and I refused again.
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Alvin Ang
Local time: 12:16
English to Chinese
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I think you are pretty ethical in that sense, at least not going to duplicate the effort in the translation which is already done by a professional.
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Evans (X)
Local time: 05:16
Spanish to English
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| Amazon sells books, not translations | Jul 10, 2012 |
As an editor I'm using Amazon.com and here especially their createspace feature. There is nothing about translations there. I'm working with independent translators (German-English) and then bring books to the market via createspace.
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Muriel Vasconcellos
United States
Local time: 21:16
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
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TOPIC STARTER | I posted this as a joke | Jul 12, 2012 |
When I received the e-mail, I thought it was terribly funny that the person requesting translation services didn't realize I was referring to a published book and assumed that I was sending them to machine translation. I wanted to share the experience as a joke, but the site managers chose to post it under scams. I never intended to start a serious discussion.
[Edited at 2012-07-12 06:01 GMT]
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