I am confused by the books advertised as Books in French when they are actually translations of books written in French originally. It was quite disappointing to get one of these. What can be done about this?

Contact the Team using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this, and every other, page.

I'm not sure what the team would be able to do for you. If the book you got had the right author, title, ISBN and binding that matched the listing, then you got what you ordered. A book that's actually printed in French can only be posted here if the book description says that it's in French; but it's not true that an English book can't be posted to a listing that has a description saying it's in French. The member who posts an English book never even has to look at the book description when posting her book, so she wouldn't even know. In short, there's absolutely no guarantee that you will get a book that matches the description.

Just so we can see it, can you give an example of a listing where you expected a French book and got an English book?

If I search for Literature & Fiction:Foreign Language Fiction:Spanish, one result I get is ISBN 9780525482758.  This book is in English.

If it's the site's search engine which is incorrect, then only the team (using the contact us button) would be able to comment on that.  

But if you click on a book's detail and then the order from Amazon button, Amazon usually lists the language. Maybe that would be a way for you to find out if a book is in the language you're looking for? Amazon's product details show the book in the example you gave above, ISBN: 9780525482758, as the language being English. You could also add an RC (requestor condition) stating you only want books in French (or Spanish) and turn it on for specific books you want in a certain language.

You can also use tags to find find books in foreign languages.

Here's a search for books that are in Spanish: http://www.paperbackswap.com/Espanol/tag/43549/

Here's one for books that are in French: http://www.paperbackswap.com/En-Francais/tag/12433/

Thanks, everyone, for the good feedback. I guess I just have to do more research before ordering, but I do think it would be logical to separate books actually in other languages from books translated to English.

Pat

Sorry, I forgot to give an example of a disappointing order. It was Suite Francaise by Nemirovsky. No one needs to point out to me that  a translator was listed besides the author. I just think the placement was misleading. (Not the posting, the member was fine, just the category system.

Some of the genre selections are wrong. I just went into one that is has the genre for untranslated when it is clearly a translated version. The problem is that this gets cleaned up by data editing and there certainly isn't enough time in the volunteer's days to clean up everything. If you see some that are marked as untranslated and they are, feel free to submit a data edit to remove that genre subcategory and maybe add something at the end of the description noting it is translated to English.