Japanese author page merge and resulting issues with Japanese editions

[okyrhoe]

Apparently the Japanese author page "村上 春樹" [ was https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ] for Haruki Murakami has been merged into the English page [ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ].
End result is that for most Japanese editions of his books, the primary author field and the secondary author field display the same information twice, "Haruki Murakami, Haruki Murakami".

I created a new "村上 春樹" [ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ] and I hope I have it right. Biographical information is missing, as I couldn't find the original Japanese text in the librarian change log for this author.

There are plenty of Japanese editions that now need to be corrected one by one.
Here are some
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

and more can be found by scrolling through
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
as well as the multiple editions of each title.

[Ine]

Think I've got them all.

[okyrhoe]

Ine wrote: "Think I've got them all."

Thanks!

One question, though.

Isn't the normal procedure to place the name in Latin alphabet as primary author, and the non-Latin version as secondary, even if the latter is the author's 'native' language in which they originally publish?
That's what I have been doing for Greek authors.

[Ine]

I've based my decision on the idea that if someone owns a Japanese language version of a book, with a Japanese title, they'd want to sort their shelves on a Japanese author name as well.

I have the same problem with Chekhov, for instance, whose name is spelled Tsjechov in Dutch and who I'd like to sort under T on my Dutch shelves, although I'd sort him under C on my English shelves.

I'm not aware of any clear policy rules as regards to the order of names, just that the books need to be available under the English spelling of the author name. Listing the English spelling as secondary author takes care of that requirement.

It still remains the rule that if it is the English language edition, then the English spelling of the author needs to come first, of course. And there's nothing wrong with (temporarily) moving the order around to facilitate combining editions.

[okyrhoe]

Ine wrote: "I'm not aware of any clear policy rules as regards to the order of names..."

from https://www.goodreads.com/comment/sho...
"Any book published under the non-Roman name should have the Roman version of the name as the primary author, and the Cyrillic (or whatever other language) name as the secondary author. That allows editions in other languages to be combined."

[Ine]

OK, I was referring to the librarian manual, and couldn't find anything about it in there. Rivka does mention that it's to do with combining, which would easily be accomplished by temporarily switching the order around (which is what I did for the Murakami books).

[Cait]

Ine wrote: "Rivka does mention that it's to do with combining, which would easily be accomplished by temporarily switching the order around (which is what I did for the Murakami books)."

That can actually cause problems with the edition count not showing up correctly in some places. It's best to have all editions of a book under the same primary author.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Different editions of a book not having the same primary author can cause quite a few distinct problems. Please keep the primary author for all editions of a work the same.

[Ine]

Okidoki. It's a pity because of the sorting issues, but I'll keep it in mind.

[Hanna]

Just a *bump* and FYI that someone has again merged the Japanese author page 村上 春樹 into the English page for Haruki Murakami. As a result the Japanese editions of his books have, again, 'Haruki Murakami' listed twice as the author. This seems to happen quite often and I guess there's no magic undo button for fixing this? Anyway, since it's way past my bedtime and I must head off to bed, maybe someone else wants to start working on this?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Hanna wrote: "I guess there's no magic undo button for fixing this?"

Sadly no.

[Hanna]

That's what I thought. Oh well.

I started to go trough the books and hopefully got most of the Japanese editions on the first page. Only 8 more pages to go... There's a lot that needs fixing in Murakami's books but for now I just concentrated on the problem mentioned above.

[okyrhoe]

In the past when I'd do these kind of reversions I would send an fyi message to the person who did the merge [if I could figure out who] just in case they tried to repeat the merge! Just saying...