Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
note: This topic has been closed to new comments.
Archived
>
author names in different languages.
message 51:
by
Trine
(new)
Mar 17, 2015 09:54AM

reply
|
flag
In most English-speaking countries she appears to published under Blaedel (e.g.: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...), so that should be the first-listed author on all editions.
The two profiles should NOT be merged.
The two profiles should NOT be merged.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

I read couple of comments and finding it difficult to read all the comments to get my answers across.
I'm having an issue with the author's name I've added. I added his name in Bengali. He is a Urdu writer and already has his profile in English. I thought since we have a lot books translated in Bengali from Urdu why not have his profile in Bengali with lists of Bengali books. I spent hours editing and adding informations. Today I login to see all his Bengali books are found under his English profile and the Bengali profile I've created has disappeared.
What happened to the profile I've created? Can't we have the author's profile in different language?

"Today I login to see all his Bengali books are found under his English profile"
This in itself is correct though, but they should *also* be found under his Bengali profile.

Thanks!

Thank you very much Lethe.
The author's profile in English https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
If you take a minute ( I bet it will be confusing for you but you'll work through it straightway by what I meant) and go through his lists of books, you'll see some of the Bengali books are listed in there.
What I did was
1) Added author's name in Bengali when I added his books.
2) Added his name (profile)the one in English under 'add new author'. Could this be the reason?

Looking through the list, I see that his Urdu books also have just the English transliteration. This is just plain wrong. And on most of the Bengali books I see his English name listed twice, which means that somebody did indeed merge both profiles. Unfortunately this happens quite a lot with authors with multiple-language profiles, and there is no way to un-merge them. The only thing you can do is leave a librarian note saying the profiles should absolutely not be merged.
If you wish to make another Bengali profile (I can understand if you don't), you can perhaps copy/paste the previous edits you made. (Go to his English profile, click on 'edit data' and then on 'librarian edits'.)
I'm sorry I can't help you with this :(

ETA Now the Bengali books have completely disappeared from Naseem Hijazi's profile. You, or anybody else, working on this?

It all makes sense now. You have done more than enough. Thank you very much. I appreciate your replies and advices. I've already started to make edits to his lists of Bengali books I've added. It was quite simple. I just had to 'edit data'.

ETA Now the Bengali books have completely disappeared from..."
I'm working on this. Will be making his profile look like the link you have posted.

This is becoming extremely annoying. There was a librarian note saying not to merge. Somebody is clearly sabotaging here. Calling out to GR staff: will you please make it very clear (once more) that multiple-language author profiles should on no account be merged?
I'd also like to know whether books that have been translated into another language (but not into English) should get the English name as primary author, if that author has other books (other titles) in English translation.
Thanks in advance.
Notes added to these profiles: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

..."
Thanx lethe,
It did become annoying and I felt so angry. I had to create author profile in Bengali TWICE. Both times it's been changed. I started digging and luckily found the member who was behind it. It seemed he didn't know what he was doing. He thought he was doing a good job by linking translated Bengali books to his English profile.
I sent him a message and explained about my frustration, gave him this thread's link, told him to read my comments and your replies.
Anyway, next day I checked back to see he'd re edited everything. Pheww!

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show..."
Thanks Rivka. I hope whoever goes to merge sees your name.

And rivka answered my question when she made the new profile. All translated books should have the English name/transliteration as the first author, other (original/translated) name as the second. So the correct way is Nazeem Hijazi first, Bengali transliteration second for his books in Bengali.

Hi, separate profiles in different languages still allows for all reviews of a same book to be seen on all editions, right?


I just found this author profile
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
First of all, that's a wrong way to create a profile. It has the author's name in Telugu followed by English transliteration in the braces.
As far as I know, this author had not written in English but I'd like to keep an English profile just the same as his books were probably translated into English (though I can't find them now). Since I'm not sure if the author has books in English or not, and to err on the cautious side, I'd like to keep an English profile.
I'm planning to do the following and need someone more experienced in doing such stuff, to let me know if I'm goofing up anywhere
1) Edit the linked profile's data such that it has name written in Telugu
చలం(chalam) --> 'చలం'
2) Update all the books with an additional author called 'Chalam', which is the English transliteration of author's name.
3) Once #2 is done, GR would create a profile for English name, where I'm planning to provide the link to existing author in details section. By that way, people who visit the English profile can still check out the main profile which has complete author details.
I'd also like to leave a librarian note asking others *NOT* to merge the two profiles in future, as I really want to have an English profile for the author. This is because, almost 99% of searches for Telugu books are done by typing the English transliteration (takes too much effort to type in non-Roman script) and I don't want people to keep adding books thinking that the author doesn't yet exist on GR (most of his books don't have ISBN or ASIN, so we can't stop people from creating duplicate books).
Looking forward to your suggestions.

Is by any chance the second book here one of his?

I see only one book there and it's titled "Sudha (Nectar)....". Seems like a collection of poems written by Chalam in Telugu, which were then translated into English by people mentioned on the cover.
Can't I just update the English profile you found ( link) with all the details from the profile I linked so that it looks exactly identical in terms of author details with the Telugu profile? Both the profiles are unclaimed, so technically how does one identify a primary profile other than the fact that it has all the books ever written/translated belonging to Chalam and that it lists the author's name in English? :)
What I'd like to do is -
Rename the profile I found to 'చలం'.
Update all the books under this profile where I add 'Chalam' as primary author and 'చలం' as secondary. [obviously the author's name cannot allowed to be చలం(chalam) as per GR policy]
Update the English profile data similar to the Telugu profile.
This way -
The Telugu profile has 49 followers while the English one has 2 (pedantic in me would be happy seeing the comparison as Chalam was a highly influential Telugu writer)
The English profile has all the books listed under Telugu profile as well as this book "Sudha (Nectar)....".
Both the profiles have same details in "About this author" section
What do you think?

Technically on GR the primary name is the one in first position. By GR rules if the author is translated it should be the most-popular Roman name. But I think you are aware of that.
And yes, you can manage the profiles as per your suggestion (or I see not reason why you shouldn't). I'm simply suggesting an alternative option.
P.S. If you can take a look when you are done with the profile work.
This seems like transliteration. Is there a book it can be merged with?
And this seems like it needs merging.

Transliteration --> I updated the title to reflect the original title in Telugu (I don't have the cover with me right now; will take a pic next time I visit the library). There are no other books with that name in GR for me to merge so I'm going to leave it at that.
Book in the second link needs merging. I guess only a super can do it since it has 19 ratings? I want the one with the book cover kept with the other edition merged into it.

Yes, you can post the request here. I just left it for you as you are dealing with the profile and thought there might be more editions to deal with.

Then I came across this. Book's title is given on GR as Transliterated name (Actual title on cover) (Language) while author field has only transliterated name though the book cover shows his Hindi name. Edition language is mentioned English but Amazon link for that ISBN shows it's Hindi. Ho hum, more work to do.
Thank you for your help so far. :)

Also does the author have a Hindu profile? I can't see one.
Michael wrote: "Ho hum, more work to do."
That is how it is around here. You start doing one thing and then find a hundred more issues. However there is a lot more to be done and desired with non-English authors and books as there are less Librarians (IMO) working on those.

Also info about the author should be in the profile not the book description.

As far as I know, the author wrote primarily in Hindi and Urdu while his works were translated in English as well as Russian (Wiki says so). I guess he'd be having a minimum of 4 profiles on GR then?
Also, author never wrote books with his own name and except people who love trivia, almost no one even remembers his original name (Dhanpat Rai Srivastav). Author always wrote Hindi and Urdu works under pen name प्रेमचंद or پریمچند respectively (transliteration: Premchand). But he is also commonly referred to as Munshi Premchand where Munshi is an honorific title. Though the author never used Munshi in any of the books he wrote, it's still used on covers of several English translations. So that makes it 5 profiles then?
Hindi: प्रेमचंद [Premchand] --> 3 books
Urdu: پریمچند [Premchand] --> Can't find on GR (my Urdu is hopeless)
English: Premchand --> 79 distinct works
and Munshi Premchand --> 99 distinct works; only profile with complete author details and I'll treat this as primary
Russian: Мунши Премчанд [Munshi Premchand] --> no books added yet (I took that Russian transliteration from Google Translate)
First I'm going to sort through all his Hindi works where I add Munshi Premchand as primary author and प्रेमचंद as secondary. I'll then add Munshi Premchand as primary to all the English translated works lying under Premchand. Then I'll see which all English translated books I can combine with their originals. Oh I'll also be adding English transliteration to the Hindi titles so that they are easier to search (difficult to type Hindi script on widely used English keyboards). That should take me a few weeks at least

"The only exceptions are those where the author is known primarily by a name that includes the honorific:
Example:
Mahatma Gandhi (not Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)"
(https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/6...)

"The only exceptions are those where the author is known primarily by a name that includes the honorific:
Example:
Mahatma Ga..."
A few English translations were published with "Munshi Premchand" and a few were published with "Premchand". I should be using two different profiles then, correct?

The description is also in English but I don't think there should be the Chinese name.

Primary author set (Liu Yichang).
The profile used to carry both the English and Chinese name. I've left the original profile as there are more books in Chinese and it will keep all the followers there and created the English profile.


The only genuinely English title appears to be a DVD: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..., the rest is all Russian/Vietnamese/Turkish, as far as I can see.

The only genuinely English title appears to be a DVD: https://www.goo..."
I was sure it was book :/

http://www.worldcat.org/title/a-zori-...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/53...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
The uploaded covers were for a completely different book.

Argh, such a mess.


Thanks for your work ;-)

Ellie found an English-language title. It doesn't mean the name should be changed though, just the English version added as primary author.

This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
Books mentioned in this topic
The Imitation of Christ (other topics)Children of the Arbat (other topics)
Heavy Sand (other topics)
Children of the Arbat (other topics)
Heavy Sand (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Sergei Lukyanenko (other topics)Leopoldo Alas (other topics)
Victor Astafiev (other topics)
Victor Astafiev (other topics)
Thomas à Kempis (other topics)
More...