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Translating author names?
Mod
rivka, isn't it the other way around for authors whose names are not in latin script? that's what i'd been told O_oie. shouldn't an arab author's book in arabic listed as
author 1 - English transliteration of author's name
author 2 - Arabic name in arabic script
?
if not, it's not possible to combine this author with English translations of his/her work.
Mod
True, I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, just wanted to make sure I was doing it right. The way you wrote the rule made me think that ALL primary authors should be listed in their native language script..It's all a bit confusing (that's why I suggested adding all this info to the librarian manual the other day).
Mod
I was confused transliterating Japanese authors too. So the criteria in order of importance is: 1. author's nationality
2. language the book is written in
I find it a tad strange to have two author pages for the same author though.
Also, in Japanese as a standard even for authors* you have surname first. Should authors be edited that way, in Roman script I mean.
*In Romania we use the same system except for notable people.
So now what shall I do? Translate the author name into Arabic and put it as primary author and then add his name in his native language as a secondary author? Right?
These are two examples of what I've been told I should do:Greek author/Greek book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83... (second name is author's Greek name)
Foreign author/Greek translation: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83... (second name is the translator's name)
in both cases, the first author is in latin script so that the book can be merged with versions of the same book in different languages.
Mod
Unfortunately, it's the best solution we have for now.
Lindu wrote: "Also, in Japanese as a standard even for authors* you have surname first. Should authors be edited that way, in Roman script I mean."
No, please follow English standards in English.
surfmadpig, I think you're right. I think at some point we determined that for consistency's sake we should always have the Latin script author listed first. Maybe someone (hint! hint! ;) ) will write that up and stick it in the Manual Additions folder for discussion, so we can get the manual updated.
Ng, I think I gave you the wrong instructions. The Arabic author should be listed second, not first. Sorry about that!
Don't worry rikva.. I got it :)But seriously this must have a technical solution.. Like when I add a book I would have two fields for the primary author,
1- Author name in Latin
2- Author name in native language (in case the book is translated.)
Instead of confusing some ppl and let them think that the book has an author and an co-author...
How about this suggestion?
By the way, by "Latin characters" do you mean like "José Saramago" for instance, with accents and special characters and all. or as in "Jose Saramago" without these special characters?So when I translate a book for this author form Portuguese to Arabic do I write his name in the primary author field as "José Saramago" or "Jose Saramago"?
I was referring only to letters of the English alphabet - bad choice of word, I guess. I don't know what a librarian should do in case there is a non-English character, such as é. I've heard that the authors are merged, but am not sure, so better not do anything until someone more knowledgeable comments.
I don't think people believe there is a second author when they see something like Εις το φως της ημέρας this, for example, as it's clear that the title is not in English either.
Mod
"José Saramago" should be listed that way, and not without the accented character.
rivka, thanks for the clarifications. maybe these hints could be added as quick pointers in the edit page, but they should definitely be codified in the manual.
OK, just bare with me for a second, I want to make sure that the rule is clear..So the name of the author should be written in Latin. Any Latin character based language.. Like in case he's Portuguese or French or whatever..
But if the author is Japanese for instance, than his name should be written in LATIN characters and then in Japanese as a secondary author.. Right?
Oh I have another question re: the original title field. Say it's a translated work- from Arabic, Japanese or another language that uses a different script than Latin. Do we use- the original title and script e.g. おとなり
- the original title in transliteration e.g. Otonari
- the title in English translation e.g. Neighbour
I ask because I noticed a few Japanese novels translated into English also had the original title in English.
The original title and script, exactly as it appears on the cover.
surfmadpig wrote: "Yes"Perfect!
Thank you very much guys!
Mod
So what if the transliteration of the author's name varies depending by the edition/translation? I have the book "The Little Black Fish" that has at least three spellings for the author. At least two I can see are actually printed on the copy of the book:http://www.goodreads.com/search/searc...
One of these books has chosen to include two of the spellings as different authors. I'm just not sure how to combine or if they should even be combined since there are different translators.
Mod
surfmadpig wrote: "These are two examples of what I've been told I should do:Greek author/Greek book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83... (second name is author's Greek name)
Foreign author/Greek translatio..."
LMAO
Totally off topic, but the second Greek book looks really interesting! Hehehe, ordering it from the library.......
There is another complication to this issue. Sometimes, there are several different transliterations in Latin script for the same author. For example, "Fyodor Dostoyevsky" is the English transliteration of the Russian author whereas in Sweden, we transliterate his name as Fjodor Dostojevskij. This causes problems if the above mentioned method is used. If the English version of the transliteration is used as primary author for the English translation of the book and the Swedish transliteration is used for the Swedish translation, then these editions can not be merged. There are many examples of cases that causes these problems. Aristotle is transliterated as "Aristoteles" in Swedish, Plato as "Platon".A possible way to solve this would be to use the English transliteration of the name as primary author for the Swedish translation, and use the Swedish transliteration as a secondary author, but this raises the question of why the English transliteration should take preference over the Swedish one. What about some hypothetical case where there is no English transliteration due to the absence of an English translation of the book? What if there is one transliteration of the author's name in German for example, and another in Swedish? Should German take precedence over Swedish or the other way around? Should we keep a long list of languages showing which languages gets precedence of the others?
I suppose the best solution to this problem would be to enable several variant names to be added to an author, or maybe to enable the merging of author profiles in different languages while preserving their transliterated names. This would also eliminate the confusion mentioned above caused by there seeming to be several different co-authors to a book when actually, there are just several different ways to write the same author's name.
In the absence of the aforementioned solution, I'd prefer to have the author's name in the original language as primary author, and the different transliterations as secondary authors.
Mod
Because the majority of users on this site are English-speakers, and the majority of the books are in English.
rivka wrote: "Leo wrote: "this raises the question of why the English transliteration should take preference over the Swedish one."Because the majority of users on this site are English-speakers, and the major..."
Sure, but that still doesn't answer my concerns. Ignoring all the books that are not in English is not a responsible response to a real problem. The minority is definitely not insignificant here.
First of all, I raised the issue of a hypothetical case where there is no English translation, but two different translations in languages which use different transliterations of the author's name.
Second, if you feel that this scenario is too far-fetched and that it therefore deserves no attention, there is another problem that definitely does need to be taken care of. Swedish editions of Dostoyevsky's books are added with the Swedish transliteration of his name. One could of course edit all those books to have "Fyodor Dostoyevsky" as primary author instead of "Fjodor Dostojevskij", but this is a quick and dirty hack instead of a real solution.
It would be easy enough to go through Dostoyevsky's books and edit them, but what about contemporary and future books by living authors from other countries? We would have to have to agree on the rule to always use the English transliteration of authors' names. New additions of books will probably not follow this rule as it is highly counter-intuitive, and automatic importing of book data from Amazon or other databases will give non-English translations of books by non-Latin authors the wrong transliteration of the name. For example, if the Swedish language version of "Crime and Punishment" would be imported, it would get "Fjodor Dostojevskij" as primary author, forcing manual edits to enable merging of editions.
The only real solution to the problem would be to enable books with different primary authors to be merged if the authors are somehow indicated to be the same person. In the absence of a real solution though, the primary author should be written as the native language version of the author's name. This is of course much more intuitive than choosing one foreign language transliteration over all others.
In case most people here disagree with me, what is the proposed solution to the current problem with Dostoyevsky? Should I change the primary author of all Swedish-edition versions of his books from "Fjodor Dostojevskij" to "Fyodor Dostoyevsky"?
Goodreads intends to create author aliases to handle not only this situation, but also pen names. You'll have to wait for a staff member to comment on where that change is in the priority list. Given the recent poll, I think it's one of two major changes they're considering tackling next. All the other more ad hock solutions are just intended as a temporary measure. I believe, at the moment, we go by the Library of Congress to choose the correct spelling of the author's name, which would tend to favor the American spelling.
mlady_rebecca wrote: "Goodreads intends to create author aliases to handle not only this situation, but also pen names. You'll have to wait for a staff member to comment on where that change is in the priority list. Giv..."Aha, that's good news! Does this mean that we will be able to enter any of the author's aliases as primary author and merge editions of books where the primary authors are listed using different aliases?
Mod
I just ran into this exact problem with Dostoyevsky and searched my way to this thread to see how this is usually solved. The correct solution is a technical one, but it cold still be some time until that is implemented. Meanwhile, Leos question about whether to change Dostojevskij as primary author to Dostoyevsky on the swedish editions remains unanswered. A number of swedish translations use Dostojevskij as primary author and can't be merged with the others. Most swedish translations use only Dostoyevsky as primary author, so it is tempting to change the Dostojevskij ones to Dostoyevsky and add the swedish spelling as secondary author.
It feels like the correct thing to do, yes?
Mod
I've gone through the Swedish version Dostoyevsky books now, changed the primary author and merged them with the other editions.
While reading Anna Karenina I noticed the author is now listed as Lev N. Tolstoj instead of Leo Tolstoy as it is listed in the Library of Congress. Should this be switched back?
Mod
Yeah I saw that too. Looks like someone didn't check the rules before updating all his books. I'll get on it. ;)
Ummm Rivka,that particular person has gone on a separating/renaming frenzy in the last 24 hours...switching books to the Italian versions.
Mod
I will send you the link. Thank you. :-/
I tried to combine editions of Otfried Preußler's books, but his name is spelt as Preussler on the Hungarian editon's cover and Projsler in Serbian. Now what is the trick to combine these editions?
Zerge wrote: "I tried to combine editions of Otfried Preußler's books, but his name is spelt as Preussler on the Hungarian editon's cover and Projsler in Serbian. Now what is the trick to combine these editions?"You need to add the original spelling as the first author, and then combine them. I do not know whether you then can change the order again.
It is probably wise to add a note to both author pages of the alternative spellings that links to the original spelling.
I seem to remember that Goodreads development team is working on an aka-feature, so that in these cases the author pages can be linked as being the same author, but that is not yet available.
Elly wrote: "I do not know whether you then can change the order again."You can: once editions are combined, they stay combined until manually separated.
Mod
rivka wrote: "True, but it causes problems on author booklist pages, so please don't."Is it doing that thing where the books show up twice again?
Mod
Here's something I'd like some feedback on.For Greek authors whose works are translated into several languages, but in each language the author's name is spelled differently (in the Latin alphabets). Sort of like the Dostoyevsky situation above, maybe?
Case 1 (Ζυράννα Ζατέλη)
English: Zyranna Zateli
Français: Zyranna Zateli
Deutsch: Siranna Sateli
Case 2 (Παύλος Μάτεσις)
English: Pavlos Matesis
Deutsch: Pavlos Matessis
Français: Pavlos Matessis
For Greek editions I have been putting the English version of the name first, and then the Greek as a second author.
So I followed the same logic and for the German and French editions placed the English version of the author's name first, followed by the FR or DE spelling.
Combining the various editions/translations was a breeze.
Mod
rivka wrote: "Sounds good to me."OK, thanks for the vote of confidence.
The second question is how can we indicate that these variant author pages are "correctly spelled" (in their respective languages) so they won't be mistaken as mispellings of English?
Mod
That is a good question. I suggest a Librarian's Note on each.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Anna Karenina (other topics)Εις το φως της ημέρας (other topics)
I used to add English books translated into Arabic, in that case I translate the author name too.
Recently I found some books translated into Arabic, but the author name was kept in English, so that anyone searching for this author can get all of his books in all languages in one page.
I know it's a bit late to ask that but, what's the right thing to do? Keep author name in his native language or translate it?