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Questions (not edit requests) > What to do about an author with names entered in different character sets

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message 1: by MD (new)

MD (myrosia) | 4 comments There is a Russian author with her name properly spelled in cyrillic as "Татьяна Устинова". But a number of her Russian-language books were entered with transliterated spellings, using at least 3 different transliterations of her name (Tatiana Ustinova/ Tatyana Ustinova/ T. Ustinova). Some books are entered with proper Cyrillic name and titles.

How do I fix this? Should I change everything to Cyrillic? Or settle on a single transliteration? The books in question are all definitely Russian editions, not translations. Can the name get changed automatically everywhere, or would I have to fix every book by hand?


message 2: by Cornelia (new)

Cornelia (stage) | 86 comments If they're really all Russian editions I'd use the Cyrillic spelling for all of them - but I'd add a librarian's note with the name in at least one transcription for all those who can't read the Cyrillic versions.


message 3: by Paula (new)

Paula (paulaan) | 7014 comments Where any books have been translated into roman then use the roman name in the primary position. Use library of congress classification to decide which roman version.

Then place the Russian name in the secondary position for the Russian editions

Check out Anton Chekhov as an example

The primary author name must be he same to combine editions


message 4: by Krystal109 (new)

Krystal109 | 1086 comments I combined all the roman name profiles into the proper one.

Any book that is published in languages outside Russian need the roman name as the primary (for combine purposes). Then as the secondary author you use the original language name.


In other words, most of her books should have 2 authors:
Tatiana Ustinova
Татьяна Устинова

Technically, if the book is only published in Russian it can have Татьяна Устинова as the primary (since it will only be combined with other editions that use the same name). The issue with this is that the book may be published in roman languages later and then it will have issues with combining. It's generally better to also use the roman name first and the original name secondary.


message 5: by MD (new)

MD (myrosia) | 4 comments OK, I see the point about the author name. What about titles? Should they be Russian? Or transliterated into English as well? I have to say, with some of the transliterations that have been entered there, I would never find the book - there are always variants, and guessing the right one is often a losing game. Especially if special glyphs (as in the library of congress) are used.


message 6: by MD (new)

MD (myrosia) | 4 comments Krystal109 wrote: "I combined all the roman name profiles into the proper one.


Uh, actually, not all of them. When I went in now, there were still differences. Two were straightforward errors (1st and last name reversed, an unusual variant of the first name); I combined those. But another one gave me pause:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Strictly speaking, this is the library of Congress authorized heading. But no one coming from Russia would recognize this - the glyphs make it look crazy (and the transliterated book names are nearly unreadable, though I recognize them all as the books I read from the same author)

So which spelling should be kept in this case? There are no Roman translations that I am aware of at the moment.


message 7: by Ellie (last edited Aug 28, 2012 04:21PM) (new)

Ellie Loredan (ellieloredan) | 113 comments For Russian titles (or actually for all non-Roman languages), the policy is to use the Cyrillic titles and add the transliteration in square brackets afterwards.


message 8: by MD (new)

MD (myrosia) | 4 comments Ahh, now I get to take back the "No Roman Translations". Looks like there are a couple of translations into German. And they use a completely non-standard transliteration - not Library of Congress, and is unlikely to be guessed by an English speaker (though might be OK for a German - don't know the language)
Tatjana Ustinowa
http://www.amazon.de/Dass-du-nicht-me...

So now there seems to be a LOC spelling with the funny glyphs I referenced in my post above; the "common" spelling closest to the LOC spelling but without glyphs (which I would expect to be the official Russian transliteration on her passport etc.), and the spelling used in German translation. Which one should get used as the main one?


message 9: by Cornelia (new)

Cornelia (stage) | 86 comments It's the normal way to transcribe Cyrillic Russian into German at the book you quote. The reason is that transcriptions follow the languages' in question phonetic pronunciation - thus they can differ vastly between languages. I usually add the "German" name simply as another author. So you would have the "English" name first, the Cyrillic Russian name second and the "German" name third.


message 10: by Emy (new)

Emy (emypt) | 5037 comments England, USA, Germany, and France, for example, all have different 'standard' forms of transliteration. I got annoyed enough at this to do my MA LIS project on it! :) Actually, there are at least two US systems if I recall correctly... LC is God though here :D

The diacritics are usually only used when you have a system which can take them, since GR can't, I would ignore them.


message 11: by rivka, Former Moderator (new)

rivka | 45177 comments Mod
Cornelia wrote: "So you would have the "English" name first, the Cyrillic Russian name second and the "German" name third."

I'm not sure why any edition would need all three. Those published in Cyrillic would have English and then Cyrillic; those published in German would have English primary and German as secondary.


message 12: by Cornelia (new)

Cornelia (stage) | 86 comments Now that would be completely illogical. The only reason two just have the English name transcription and the German one is only for combining purposes. Logical would be to have the Cyrillic one first and then only the one second in which language it was published. Problem: Most people here can't read Cyrillic, thus it was decided to have the English one first.


message 13: by Krystal109 (new)

Krystal109 | 1086 comments Like rivka said you ONLY put the English name and the language in which the book is published.

If people are looking for the German version they would find it under the version with the English > German names.

There should never be 3 versions of the name on a book unless it is a book printed with multiple languages in it.


message 14: by Cornelia (new)

Cornelia (stage) | 86 comments The point is, that Myrosia worked on Russian books only and then stumbled over one German book. In a linguistic way having one language there which doesn't neither apply to the original nor the transcribed language is nonsense - that's why three names make sense because the majority speaks at least English.


message 15: by rivka, Former Moderator (new)

rivka | 45177 comments Mod
Nonsense or not, that is policy.


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