author name translate from Japanese to Chinese

[Iris]

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
[梨木 香歩] is a Japanese name.
[梨木香步] is a Chinese name.
Not just only Japanese name should have space.
[歩] is a Japanese character. [步] is a Chinese character.
Two words are totally different.
Two names shouldn't merge together.

[lethe]

A librarian posted a note on the author's edit page:

"Due to book records for Japanese editions that are auto imported to Goodreads with the full name without the space in between last and first name, it is more efficient for Librarians working on profiles, to keep only one profile for Japanese and Chinese."

I don't know if efficiency is a good reason not to keep both versions separate (especially since one of the characters is different). Perhaps staff can give a ruling?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

If one of the characters is different, then I agree they are not the same name. However, the question then becomes which editions get which name. Could be a lot of work -- and preferably for a Librarian who speaks at least one of the two languages.

[Bill]

Is the space in the middle of the Japanese name GR policy? The space is certainly not Japanese publishing policy. I have a novel in Japanese in front of me, and there is no space in the middle of the author's name.

The two characters Iris mentions are the same word in Japanese and Chinese, but due to the characters changing over time they are written slightly differently in the two languages. It's more than just a different font, but less than a different word.

[Ere]

Good day everyone, I am the one that use that note on the author edit page.
I made a mistake copy-pasting that last part in the note, because in that specific case the two names are different. I corrected it. Let me elaborate the rest.

I use to edit Japanese authors and books, and I only do because I am fluent in Jp (and fyi I also have basic knowledge of Chinese language).
So I only speak for profiles of Japanese authors (that get translations in Chinese), not viceversa.

GR Manual says that you can have a different language profile if the author is translated into another language.
So, using the example given by Iris for Kaho Nashiki, Japanese author:
- Kaho Nashiki: profile in latin letters, that must be the one that is always used as primary author for all editions if the author is translated in other languages;
- 梨木香歩: Japanese language profile, secondary author in Japanese language editions;
- 梨木香步: Chinese language profile, should be used as secondary author in Chinese language editions, but usually these edition do not include the latin letter name, even if it's not compliant with the Manual.
Maybe there are even more profiles for this author, eg, for Thai, Korean and Russian etc, that are written in different writing systems/alphabets.

But when the characters in Chinese and Japanese are exactly the same, there is no rule that allows separate profiles.
It's not just a matter of efficiency then.

Some notes in Chinese profiles stated that "this way we can find all the Chinese books in one profile", but it's not like we're making a English profile, a Spanish one, a French one etc, when those language all share the same alphabet.


As far as I know, there is a habit - not a mandatory rule - of making two distinct profiles by using the space when the kanji/hanzi are the same.
The Chinese one is the one without the space, the Japanese one has the space.
This happens both for lit authors and manga authors.

But: all Japanese book entries that get automatically imported by the system from Amzn jp actually have the name without the space.
That means that tons of Japanese language books get directly into the Chinese language profiles. It takes a LOT of mantainance to edit them one by one just to have them in the "right" profile. But since more books will eventually get there, it is a never ending effort.
Is it efficient? No. Does it make sense in the Manual? No.

This is why I started adding that note, when the Chinese and the Japanese names are the same.
I hope someone from the staff can comment on this :)

[Ere]

PS:
I forgot to mention that Japanese language has no spaces between surnames and names, or in texts in general, so the statement:
"Not just only Japanese name should have space."
is incorrect.

[lethe]

Ere wrote: "I hope someone from the staff can comment on this :) "

Staff already commented on this, see message #3.

The last character in the Japanese name is different from the Chinese one, so both names are not the same (plus one has a space and the other doesn't).

Ere wrote: "GR Manual says that you can have a different language profile if the author is translated into another language.
So, using the example given by Iris for Kaho Nashiki, Japanese author:
- Kaho Nashiki: profile in latin letters, that must be the one that is always used as primary authors for all editions."

I believe that is only true if the author has been translated into a Western language. In this case, the primary author should be the Japanese name IMO, and the Chinese name secondary on the editions that have that.

[Ere]

lethe wrote: "Staff already commented on this, see message #3."
The name with the space issue is not cleared yet.

lethe wrote: "(plus one has a space and the other doesn't)"
There is NO space in Japanese language between name and surname, as I said in comment #6. Also Bill said that on comment #4.

lethe wrote: "I believe that is only true if the author has been translated into a Western language. In this case, the primary author should be the Japanese name IMO, and the Chinese name secondary on the editions that have that."

The Manual, in the "Authors published in multiple languages" section, clearly says:
"All editions should have the primary author name as the standard or most common Roman (that is, English-language) version of the author's name. Editions published under another spelling of the name or the name in another language should have that name listed as the secondary author. Additional author profiles may be linked directly from the About Me section on the author profile."
Link: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

Unless another rule allows what you say for author published only in languages that use sinograms, the rule itself says that a latin alphabet name should be used.
It also allows to easily combine all the different languages editions that come out.

[lethe]

Ere wrote: "lethe wrote: "(plus one has a space and the other doesn't)"
There is NO space in Japanese language between name and surname, as I said in comment #6. Also Bill said that on comment #4."

That is why I crossed it out :)

But apparently there is no agreement, see the top answer in https://japanese.stackexchange.com/qu...

About the author only having been translated into non-western (Latin-alphabet-using) languages, see staff's comment here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Bill]

I was posting while at work yesterday, so I only had the one book with me. Looking over my shelves now, more than 90% of the spines have no space in the middle of the author's name, but a few do have a space.

It seems to be stylistic, rather than as an aid to parsing the name. All the names with a space are a total of three characters long (though not all three character names have a space). Three-character names aren't rare, but four-character names are far more common.

[Arenda]

lethe wrote: "About the author only having been translated into non-western (Latin-alphabet-using) languages, see staff's comment here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..."

In that example, the translation is in Polish, which uses a western alphabet.

[lethe]

Arenda wrote: "In that example, the translation is in Polish, which uses a western alphabet."

Ah yes, you're right. Stupid of me.

So I suppose the rule I linked to has been superseded.

[lethe]

Bill wrote: "All the names with a space are a total of three characters long (though not all three character names have a space). Three-character names aren't rare, but four-character names are far more common."

I found this example: 笠原 邦彦 in https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Although the space between 笠原 and 邦彦 is hardly noticeable, it is there.

[Bill]

Actually, I was referring to the book covers, not to how GR currently handles Japanese names.

If you enlarge the cover of, say, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
you can see that the author's name on the cover has no space in the middle.

[Ere]

lethe wrote: "I found this example: 笠原 邦彦 in https://www.goo..."

The profile and the book records are all in Latin letters, the name in kanji is just in the biography.

The example in message #9 is related to gengo yoshi, a very specific (hand-)written text format used mostly by students. One of the rules for its formatting is that the author's surname and name are separated by one "free square". Normally a free square or jp keybord space is only used at the beginning of a paragraph, and in haiku/tanka poetry.
Other possible examples of spaces are just there for practical (eg. the first time a person's name appears in a biography), or stylistical reasons (eg. spines), but are not grammar.
Book covers, indexes, bibliographies, colophones etc have no spaces in between surname and name. If they do, they're a negligible percentage of cases.