I was thinking that one of the problems with a lot of public domain translations is that the translations are extremely dated. So you're reading this text that

I was thinking that one of the problems with a lot of public domain translations is that the translations are extremely dated. So you're reading this text that you almost need a translation of that itself is a dated translation. This isn't the fault of Standard Ebooks, but it's an elephant in the room of public domain texts in general. In many ways I'd rather see effort put into crowdsourced or volunteer modern translation than into improved copyediting. It's especially problematic if you consider that the original text in the foreign language isn't available as well, as you're noting.