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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.

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  • $\begingroup$ Have you tried searching on non-English language Amazon sites? $\endgroup$ Jun 9, 2020 at 12:19
  • $\begingroup$ The article by Ferguson is in the Way Back Machine, but is also scant on the details. web.archive.org/web/20160502065642/http://news.utoronto.ca/… $\endgroup$ Jun 9, 2020 at 12:24
  • $\begingroup$ @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. $\endgroup$
    – user159323
    Jun 9, 2020 at 15:20
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    $\begingroup$ 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. $\endgroup$ Jun 9, 2020 at 17:34
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    $\begingroup$ 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"). $\endgroup$ Jun 10, 2020 at 13:29

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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

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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.

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  • $\begingroup$ 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. $\endgroup$ Jun 10, 2020 at 20:15

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