Default edition of English language book not in English

[Sarah (Presto agitato)]

When I search for the book Spartacus by Howard Fast, this اسپارتاکوس comes up as the default edition for the book. The book is originally in English, and I think it's confusing for it to come up in what I think is Arabic. Is there a way to change that?

[Banjomike]

Sarah (Warning: Potentially Off-Topic) wrote: "When I search for the book Spartacus by Howard Fast, this اسپارتاکوس comes up as the default edition for the book. The book is originally in English, and I think it's confusing for it to come up in what I think is Arabic. Is there a way to change that? "

Confusing is the word. Also annoying.

That edition is the earliest surviving edition of Spartacus on Goodreads. As a result it has been the recipient of the reviews and shelvings of every deleted edition in the last 5 years. The end result of that and the normal default shelvings is that it is the most popular edition and so becomes the default.

Only the staff can change the default edition of a book by a non-Goodreads author and they don't, as far as I know, do that.

[Sarah (Presto agitato)]

Banjomike wrote: "Confusing is the word. Also annoying.

That edition is the earliest surviving edition of Spartacus on Goodreads. As a result it has been the recipient of the reviews and shelvings of every deleted edition in the last 5 years. The end result of that and the normal default shelvings is that it is the most popular edition and so becomes the default.

Only the staff can change the default edition of a book by a non-Goodreads author and they don't, as far as I know, do that. "

Thanks for the explanation. It's a shame that there's not a way to fix it. It makes the search function much less useful.

[Tytti]

The Egyptian suffers from the same problem, though luckily the title is in English, not in Farsi. The book is originally in Finnish so making everything by default English isn't really the answer either. Though then again, Дядя Фёдор, пёс и кот is actually correct but some might get "scared" by the cyrillic letters. (Lovely book by the way, a childhood favourite of mine.)

But because "all" books have the original title and the year it was published, they should make it so it means something in the search. And of course also make finding the right (language) edition easier, because not even the alphapetical order seem to mean much. I think people should be able to choose the default language in which the books are shown first and maybe the secondary language could be English. Even though I know English quite well, I prefer to see books in my own language because then I also recognize the titles better. (And if they are translated, there is a chance I'll find them in a library, otherwise I doubt it.)

[David]

That is happening most if the timr with an English edition being the default for other languages, which is annoying, confusing and sometimes even stupid. The thing is that each of us has an edition in our shelf in a settled language that latter appears in other language.

We need a fonction to tick if the book is a translation or an original. This would help to set a default. Also this would help to finish with the biaised verion of goodreads in which English is the default language. This would make the site at least more culturaly sensible for the users.

Let me note that I am not asking for a goodreads with different language versions but a change in the programming.

It angers me to see all the time Gabriel García Márquez masterpiece with its English title whrn I am Spanidh reader and my editiin is in Spanish. And i could say same with works in French, Italian or Portuguese... Most if my books are in Spanish and French and the reading advices that I receive are always american betsellers not even related to styles, authors or settings I like. This at the end goes against goodreads and Amazon.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

David wrote: "That is happening most if the timr with an English edition being the default for other languages, which is annoying, confusing and sometimes even stupid. The thing is that each of us has an edition..."

Default is the same as saying "most popular edition" - it isn't a default edition so much as it is the most shelved edition. This is most certainly an international site, but there are more English language users than users of any other single language.

As to Spartacus, why would librarians be deleting editions that then merge with an edition that is not its duplicate?

[lethe]

David wrote: "It angers me to see all the time Gabriel García Márquez masterpiece with its English title whrn I am Spanidh reader and my editiin is in Spanish. And i could say same with works in French, Italian or Portuguese... "

This happens when the English edition is the most shelved. In GR, the most shelved edition automatically becomes the default. Only GR authors can change the default for their books.

Also, better start a new thread in future, as this one is almost two years old, plus about a specific book.

[Sarah (Presto agitato)]

lethe wrote: "David wrote: "It angers me to see all the time Gabriel García Márquez masterpiece with its English title whrn I am Spanidh reader and my editiin is in Spanish. And i could say same with works in Fr..."

It's true that this is an old thread, but David has the same question I did, just in reverse.

David, for what it's worth, I agree with you that the default edition for the book should be in the original language.

[lethe]

But what if only translations survive and the original language text was lost in the mists of time? (This only counts for very old, classic texts, but still.)

[Sarah (Presto agitato)]

lethe wrote: "But what if only translations survive and the original language text was lost in the mists of time? (This only counts for very old, classic texts, but still.)"

That would be trickier, but it seems like it would be a small percentage of books.

But then you got me thinking about Darkness at Noon, written originally in German but first published in an English translation. The original manuscript was lost. A later German translation was translated backwards from English. I checked the Wikipedia entry a couple of minutes ago to refresh my memory, and lo and behold, the original manuscript was found just this month by a graduate student doing research!

http://www.uni-kassel.de/uni/internat...

Sorry to veer off-topic there, but I thought that was kind of wild.

[lethe]

Sarah (Presto agitato) wrote: "the original manuscript was found just this month by a graduate student doing research! "

Wow! That's brilliant. And what a coincidence :)

(It's your own topic, you can veer off it ;) )