[Eric]

What it probably means, Colette, is that the publishing house is doing it on the cheap. It doesn't want to spend the money on a new translation, but may want to circumvent various copyright clauses. So if the text is a bit new, but they don't have to pay the translator for all the words, they will save money.

Various things can be revised, but what may happen is that some parts, regarded as too old-fashioned, are updated. Even when Penguin or Minerva do it, there is a whiff of cost-cutting.

I believe that the original "A. Cecil Curtis" could in fact have been a woman. I've not discovered what the "A" stands for, but this was in the days when they tried to turn women into men, because this would sell books better. She also translated from Danish, but it looks as if she could have taken her husband's double-barrelled name. This is all speculation, as Google reveals virtually nothing. But there's something funny going on, when the translator appears to have no biography on Google.

Constance McNab seems equally hard to pin down when Googling. Whether these are all pseudonyms I cannot tell. This latter name is associated with the military historian Liddell Hart.

But everything is vague.