General: Japanese and Latin - Author & Title fixing

[Emy]

There are many contemporary Japanese authors on Goodreads who are translated into English (or another Latin-alphabet language). All these works need to have

1. Latin-alphabet variant as Primary author
2. Names-as-on-Cover as secondary author

They also potentially need combines done.

For Japanese authors there is an additional complexity regarding the order of the names. Where possible, please use the version written in the order that the author is using on their English (or equivalent) publications.

[Emy]

Here is a good place to start. This series has many authors in the anthologies who need to have their names adding in Japanese characters as per covers/books:

ゲンロンβ

Here is an example record that I worked on: ゲンロンβ15

I've tried to match the orders of each name entry so that the English and Japanese forms for each author are next to one another. My process was:
1. Add a single Japanese name
2. Save the record
3. Edit > Move the added name to the correct position.
4. Ensure that "Contributor" was added to the line in the appropriate box (Edit, Save the line)
5. Add another Japanese name
6. Save the record
7. Repeat from step 3.

This is a bit of a long job, but ensures that we have added the equivalents for each author.

Please also check the titles as they should match the covers not be automatically transliterated into English. Additionally, many of the Kindle editions are incorrectly noted down as being in English - we need to change that to Japanese.

[Emy]

Kazuhiro Fujihara / 藤原 和博 Done

[Linda]

I used to spend a lot of time looking for these, but then I realized it would be a full-time job. Now I just fix them when I run into them.

[Emy]

Lindoula wrote: "I used to spend a lot of time looking for these, but then I realized it would be a full-time job. Now I just fix them when I run into them."

In some ways, fixing the catalogue is precisely that, but I find these sorts of jobs are quite rewarding as they have a finite end (e.g. one author or series are fixed).

If you find others when you don't have time to do it yourself, please feel free to use this thread to share the workload :)

藤原 和博 is now done.

[Linda]

I know it's a perpetual task, but I don't find the Japanese author name edits very rewarding because they're really messy - you never know if you've found every variant of their name in every writing system, for one thing. There may be two English versions, one French spelling, one Russian, one or two in Japanese itself, etc.

More importantly, doing it is just a constant reminder how ridiculous Goodreads' system for variant names is. It's clunky, users find it confusing (which is quite evident in the fact that non-librarians mess them up all the time with well-intended "corrections" to the name listings), and it's not efficient. I know it's what we have to work with, but spending too much time on Japanese authors just ends up making me annoyed. :) I still fix them when I find them, but I don't go hunting for them anymore.