Ever had that happen when you wanted a translation or at least a bilingual work and you got the original in a language you can barely understand, if at all?
I don't buy online that often, and so far only really from Amazon where such things don't generally happen. Although... since Dom mentioned the Monaldi & Sorti books last month, I ended up looking if they had been translated into English yet (what with the French translation coming out only now, a number of years after the Dutch version), and ended up on a page on amazon.com (or was it amazon.co.uk? either way) selling the book. It clearly mentioned the language was German, but evidently some people don't check that closely, or assume that the first hit they find for a book will surely be in English on the American/British Amazon (the titles of all Monaldi & Sorti's books are single Latin words, so the title didn't really help any). So the book had several one-star reviews complaining it was in German instead of English.
Anyway, so no, haven't had that happen to me, but I can imagine it must be annoying. I wish they made more bilingual versions, in general... you can always just buy a translation, if the book is not too obscure, but it's such a pain to have to have two books open side by side.
http://www.amazon.com/Cantica-University-Academic-Monograph-Reprints/dp/0198152442/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327793743&sr=1-1 - That's what I bought. Notice the language says English and the title is in Latin. I can read both well enough that it wouldn't be a problem. Now I knew Romanos was a Syrian/Greek writer in the mid-6th century, but there's no hint that it'd be the originals alone. Frustrating.
Then again, that Greek is much easier than Attic, not to mention I know the subject matter fairly well (the gospels being chanted, more or less).
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
It is frustrating when online sellers don't divulge correct information
- 28/01/2012 09:50:48 PM
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It's riddled with typos.
- 28/01/2012 10:52:20 PM
493 Views
Yeah, I gave up on proofreading after laboriously typing that for 15 minutes
- 28/01/2012 11:08:20 PM
542 Views
It looks like fairly simple Byzantine Greek
- 28/01/2012 11:25:09 PM
514 Views
You mean specific sellers who only ship inside Germany?
- 28/01/2012 11:37:47 PM
403 Views
And for the record
- 29/01/2012 12:59:34 AM
527 Views
It would be, yeah.
- 28/01/2012 11:16:19 PM
652 Views
I always check the language part of my purchases
- 29/01/2012 01:34:13 AM
595 Views