I don't know of any translation in English that says whale either: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Jonah%201%3A17 I think the idea that it was a whale comes mostly from children's adaptations extrapolating from the fact that it says "big fish", whales are big, and the people of the time wouldn't have made a linguistic distinction between fish and fish-like marine mammals.
As long as we are on this line of thought, many children's books like to put an ending that sounds like Jonah was nice and happy at the end, which is not there at all. It ends with him being admonished for valuing the plant but not the 20k people. I use this as a litmus test when looking at children's Bibles.
Also the story of Jericho. "Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword." is often glossed over!
