Ask Lemmy

I recall reading both "The Good Soldiers" (兵士は戦場で何を見たのか) & "Thank You For Your Service" (帰還兵はなぜ自殺するのか) by David Finkel in Japanese which have been renamed into "What did soldiers saw at the battlefield?" or "Why do returnees commit suicide?" , very different from the English original. The artwork for the front covers are different, the English one depicts troops in Iraq from inside a Humvee while the Japanese one depicts actual combat.

(Japanese books: translated from another language or originally Japanese written are always formatted from right to left with vertical text, even translated versions of works that are originally in English get the reading format mirrored, also the book dimensions do differ: English novels are larger while Japanese versions are smaller in comparison).

I mean, is this also present in European languages (i.e. German, Spanish) where a translated copy of literature that's originally published in English is called under a different title irrelevant from the source material alongside different cover art? The thing is, why are translated versions of books sometimes published under a completely different title and depending on the publishing house, why do they create their own front covers in the translated copy?