Standardising terms and description languages

[Brixton]

Q1) For titles in a language other than English, in which language should additional terms regarding book data be kept?

For example: should German books marked "Broschiert" (meaning "paperback") be changed to "paperback"-- or should German books marked "paperback" be changed to "Broschiert"?

Q2) Does the language used in the book description-- which is not always the same as that of the title/language in which the book is published-- have any influence on which to choose, above?

Q3) When there are multiple editions of a non-English book and I see the book descriptions of some are in English, should I change them to be in the language of the book (I do not mean to translate the English text but to copy existent text from similar editions in the same language)-- or leave it as is?

[mlady_rebecca]

Fields like the binding are chosen from a drop-down list so a paperback book should be called paperback no matter what language you're otherwise dealing with.

Any field that is set for the book, rather than the edition, should also be in English.

I can't really speak to the rest of that. My bias would be to keep the English, but then I only speak English.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

mlady_rebecca wrote: "Fields like the binding are chosen from a drop-down list so a paperback book should be called paperback no matter what language you're otherwise dealing with.

Any field that is set for the book, rather than the edition, should also be in English."

Agreed. For descriptions, I like a brief (one-line) English description followed by a longer book-language one (when I can find it).

[Cait]

A1) If you can translate the imported binding terms into the GR default categories, I'd say go for it. Are there fields other than binding which are language-dependent?

A3) I generally don't delete from book descriptions unless the description is actually wrong, although I know other librarians are sometimes more aggressive on that field.

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

Off the top of my head, the only other "field" which often has foreign language terms in it is the author role: you'll often see the language specific word for "Translator". I usually try to change these, but sometimes it's not worth the effort.

[Brixton]

Re: mlady_rebecca
I'm not sure if "Broschiert" got in there before the dropdown existed, or if our German friends are taking advantage of the "other" option in the dropdown. So you see, the dropdown regarding binding isn't, erm, binding (*groan*).

Re: Cait
Q1/A1) I did wonder how far language consistency should potentially extend, so if "Broschiert" for "paperback" then why not also "Übersetzer" for "Translator" and all the rest. Perhaps that's something to fiddle with when goodreads.com becomes so big we'll have goodreads.de, goodreads.co.jp, goodreads.br... ;o)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

The binding comes from Amazon, 90% of the time.