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In this community question asking about books that teach the practice of mathematics, the author mentions the works of W W Sawyer.

Which of Sawyer's books were translated into languages other than English, and what are the publication details?

His Wikipedia page states that his books Mathematician's Delight and Prelude to Mathematics "have been translated into many languages", but I have been unable to find publication details for any non-English language edition of even a single book of his. The cited source is an article by Ailsa Ferguson published by the University of Toronto (thanks, @Igor Khavkine, for tracking this down at Archive.org) which states that MD was translated into 10 languages and PtM into six, but that's all I know at the moment.

  • Have you tried searching on non-English language Amazon sites? – Jeremy Rickard Jun 09 '20 at 12:19
  • The article by Ferguson is in the Way Back Machine, but is also scant on the details. https://web.archive.org/web/20160502065642/http://news.utoronto.ca/sawyer-was-dedicated-teacher-educator – Igor Khavkine Jun 09 '20 at 12:24
  • @JeremyRickard - Yes. His author number at Amazon is B001ITYQIY. That company's .es, .fr, .de and .it sites only list works by him in the original English. –  Jun 09 '20 at 15:20
  • Many thanks for this, @IgorKhavkine. Ferguson may not identify specific languages, but she does say that Mathematician's Delight was translated into 10 and Prelude to Mathematics into six, giving grounds for confidence that his works were indeed much translated. –  Jun 09 '20 at 15:45
  • This is more of a question for Academia stackexchange than for this forum. You should be able to access WorldCat and similar catalogues to find out this information. Searching by published by and author combination sounds promising. Gerhard "Consult Your Local Librarian (Distantly)" Paseman, 2020.06.09. – Gerhard Paseman Jun 09 '20 at 16:20
  • @GerhardPaseman - His best-known titles weren't academic. Searching on "W W Sawyer" at WorldCat.com brings up some of his titles but only in English. What similar catalogues do you recommend? The WorldCat engine has no "published by" field, but even if it did I have no idea who published any non-English language editions. –  Jun 09 '20 at 17:01
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    Using Wikipedia and the ISBN link in the article on Sawyer, within minutes I found the Karlsruhe Virtueller Katalog, which is an interface to many European catalog systems, and includes WorldCat. Using Prelude to Mathematics, I found links to catalog entries in five different languages, indicating at least five different language versions. I recommend you try this path. Gerhard "Check Out The Search Fields" Paseman, 2020.06.09. – Gerhard Paseman Jun 09 '20 at 17:34
  • Many thanks, @GerhardPaseman. Please can you post a link to your search that indicates "at least five" non-English editions of Prelude to Mathematics. (That would look good in an answer, but if the URL is long then it still might fit in a comment if you choose not to write your name redundantly when it is there in your handle anyway, or if you do want it to be displayed twice then not to insert a humorous middle moniker.) –  Jun 10 '20 at 12:28
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    Searching for "WW Sawyer" on amazon.fr I found several French translations of his books. Also a handful of foreign translations on the .it, .de, .es., .nl and .jp sites (although on the Spanish site it first gave me results on professional wrestling and I had to assure it that I really did mean "WW Sawyer" and not "WWE Sawyer"). – Jeremy Rickard Jun 10 '20 at 13:29
  • Thanks for this, @JeremyRickard. After typing "W W Sawyer" in inverted commas as the search term, I've now found the following at amazon.fr: Plaisir de Mathématiques, Voir et Comprendre les Mathématiques, and Introduction aux Mathématiques. Did you find any Spanish editions? On amazon.es I found Dutch, French, and Italian, but no Spanish. –  Jun 10 '20 at 13:37
  • No, no Spanish. I thought there was one on the .es site, but I wasn’t paying attention: it was Italian. – Jeremy Rickard Jun 10 '20 at 20:20

2 Answers2

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The Polish Wikipedia page of W W Sawyer lists titles of the translations (with some publication details) of his books into Polish, but not the original titles (Mathematicians' Delight seems to be Matematyka Nauka Przyjemna; I don't have a copy at hand to confirm). Some of these translations had multiple editions; covers can be seen here: https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=W+W+Sawyer+matematyka&client=firefox-b&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDscvv7PXpAhUS2qwKHdOLBe8QsAR6BAgIEAE&biw=1588&bih=713

Margaret Friedland
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As requested here is the URL for the search results.

https://kvk.bibliothek.kit.edu/hylib-bin/kvk/nph-kvk2.cgi?maske=kvk-redesign&lang=en&title=KIT-Bibliothek%3A+Karlsruher+Virtueller+Katalog+KVK+%3A+Ergebnisanzeige&head=%2F%2Fkvk.bibliothek.kit.edu%2Fasset%2Fhtml%2Fhead.html&header=%2F%2Fkvk.bibliothek.kit.edu%2Fasset%2Fhtml%2Fheader.html&spacer=%2F%2Fkvk.bibliothek.kit.edu%2Fasset%2Fhtml%2Fspacer.html&footer=%2F%2Fkvk.bibliothek.kit.edu%2Fasset%2Fhtml%2Ffooter.html&css=none&input-charset=utf-8&ALL=&TI=Prelude+to+mathematics&AU=Sawyer&CI=&ST=&PY=&SB=&SS=&PU=&kataloge=BVB&kataloge=SWISSBIB&kataloge=WORLDCAT&ref=direct&client-js=yes

Note that I chose only a few catalogues out of the many that the KVK interface offers. Worldcat yielded many references. I recommend you try your own searches using your own catalogue choices.

Gerhard "Internet Catalogues Offer The World" Paseman, 2020.06.10.

Gerhard Paseman
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  • My signatures serve a purpose to me. If they do not serve you, don't read them. (I resisted the temptation to post all but the last few characters of the URL.) Gerhard "You're Welcome For The Link" Paseman, 2020.06.10. – Gerhard Paseman Jun 10 '20 at 20:15