Search results in other languages

[Laura]

I started reading this book and went to add it to my To Read shelf, only to discover that there was no entry for the English-language translation. Happy to be able to contribute, I went to make a new listing. This is when I discovered the policy about combining all translations of a book into a single listing. It took me a few minutes to figure out I could switch "my" version to the English-language version. This was a little confusing, even though I spend a lot of time around here and thought I really knew my way around.

The bigger problem, however, is that it simply doesn't seem to be possible to search for the book by its English title. When I couldn't find it by title, I searched by author and looked at all the books she's written. The first book in the series has both German and English listings, but even when you click on the English-language name of the series, the first book comes up in English, and the second two in German. This is quite confusing, especially if you're a novice Goodreads user. It appears, on the surface, that the book I'm trying to find hasn't been entered (or possibly hasn't even been written) yet. If I had no experience with a foreign language, it might be very difficult to even identify that a book with a title I can't read is actually just the primary, foreign-language edition of the book I'm trying to find.

Question A, then: is it possible to make titles searchable in every language they have editions for?

Next point for consideration: I'm unclear on the benefit of combining editions in different languages, if it makes searching and cataloging books more difficult. I own several books in more than one language, and so far, I have (had?) them all listed as separate books in my catalogs because they are completely different reading events, not just the same book with different cover art, a different format, or a reissue date. I will only leave reviews in my primary language, because that's what I'm comfortable with, but Goodreads is my personal library catalog too.

I realize it is difficult to draw these lines, but considering the above issues, it seems to me that foreign language editions have a good case for being separate listings.

So Question B: Is this a policy that is up for discussion?

[Renske]

Part of this are not librarian issues, such as how the search works. You can search for the title in a different language, but often you see in the list of results the default edition.

You can also search for the ISBN, if that is listed on Goodreads, the search sends you directly to that edition.
And you can shelf multiple editions of the same work.

We consider translation as editions of one work. Of course the translation can create differences, but we consider them similar enough. If different languages would not be combined you would often not see with 'compare books' that someone has read that book too. Or see in a listopia list that you have read that book. And for some authors their pages would become a huge mess of all languages were separated.

[Laura]

Then where would be the right place to inquire about the Search issue? Because that strikes me as the easiest way to fix the difficulty I have had, cataloging issues aside.

[Emy]

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